


Leading the Blind

by Tierfal



Series: Leading the Blind [1]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Blind Character, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Dog(s), Drama, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Porn, Romance, Service Animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-12 18:24:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 31,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Roy adjusts to a life of legal blindness, and Edward avenges three years of short jokes.</p><p>[Major spoilers for Brotherhood.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hindsight

**Author's Note:**

> Also known as _The fic where Roy has an[akita](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akita_Inu), because DOGS._ Extra-mega thank you to Eltea for beta-reading awesomely. ♥
> 
> This chapter is a bit dark (geddit?), but hang tight for Ed being… Ed. :'D
> 
> ETA: This fic inspired a [fanmix](http://8tracks.com/railwaykings/the-shadow-of-my-dear-heart), with all the blind jokes you could POSSIBLY WANT! :D (Originally posted [here](http://alfonselric.tumblr.com/post/84106872709)!) ♥

Marcoh can work magic, but he can’t perform miracles.

“Don’t apologize,” Roy says when the bandages have dropped away, and the darkness doesn’t lift. “I’ve had time to get used to the idea that I’d never see again. Anything more than that is a gift.”

It seems just, after all—that the souls ripped out of the Ishvalans, granted to Laboratory 5 by a subjugation ensured by Roy’s own hands, would fall short of saving him. There’s no bitterness in this; he doesn’t regret asking that the majority of the Stone’s power would go to Havoc’s injury. Even if he’d known then what he does now, he wouldn’t have made a different choice.

This isn’t going to be easy, but it is fair.

He has to believe that.

He watches the faintly pale square of the windowpane intently, trying to distinguish a shift in the light as the hours slide past. Sometime in the afternoon, he turns at footsteps in the doorway, trying to parse the overlapping smears of gray. He can’t.

Riza wouldn’t have hesitated, but there’s a frigid and irrational spear of humiliation in Roy’s chest. He doesn’t want to call out a guess and be wrong.

The footsteps proceed towards him again, briskly and close together—short strides? Their owner flops into the chair by the bedside and shifts with a whisper of fabric before settling. Roy has his suspicions, but it stills feels like it would make him vulnerable if he voiced them.

“Damn, Colonel,” Edward says.

Ten points to Roy.

“You look like shit.”

“If I call now and stop the train,” Roy says, “we can send you on the diplomatic mission of the century with Scar and Major Miles.”

“Oh, _ha_ ,” Edward says. He’s uncharacteristically quiet for a moment, though Roy can hear him fidgeting. “How are you doing? Honestly.”

“By your reckoning,” Roy says, “I feel about as good as I look.”

In the silence, he wonders which expression Edward is wearing. He gets a very strange and terrible jolt in the core of his chest at the thought that he will never again see Edward Elric abuse his features by pulling some exaggerated face. It seems somehow devastating that after all he’s suffered through and waited for, he can’t watch Edward grow into the beginning of Hohenheim’s jawline; that he can’t reap steaming ears and a clouded brow with well-timed wit; that he can’t mock the fashion sense or lack thereof which has rallied so many around a tacky blood-red coat.

“Huh,” Edward says, and his tone is noncommittally mild. “Well, I made you a list of visual things you should think about now while you still remember them.”

Roy’s palm itches, and it takes him a moment to realize that, for once, it’s not the healing wounds or the layers of gauze—it’s the vividness of the memory. It’s a fistful of rough white linen and the surprisingly insubstantial weight of a child lacking two limbs and a mother and a hope in the world.

This is Edward returning the favor. This is Edward grabbing his shirtfront and hauling him to his feet.

Roy forgot, somehow—forgot that Edward Elric has been crippled since he was eleven years old. _Disabled_ is not a word commonly applied to alchemical prodigies and hand-to-hand powerhouses, no matter how many hands they actually have. Edward has long since turned his weakness into a weapon. Ed fills a room so vibrantly that it’s difficult to think of him as anything _lessened_ , but the fact of the matter is that he’s a double-amputee.

Or he was. And to Roy’s mind’s eye, he’ll stay that way, because Roy won’t ever see the right arm that he’s recovered.

“What kind of ‘visual things’?” Roy asks.

“Spider-webs with drops of water on them,” Ed says. “Weird sunrises that go that ice-creamy color of orange. How forests look uniform from far away, and then you get up close and realize there are, like, seven million different shades of green. Dust motes in sunbeams. The way really old book covers crumble at the corners and along the top and bottom of the spine. Those stupid little gold stars on the military uniforms, which you’re going to have twenty of once you overcome your bizarre and disgusting addiction to hospital food. The way Lieutenant Hawkeye’s dog always looks like he’s smiling. And… roaches.”

Roy blinks his confusion. He wonders if that habit will eventually slip away. “Roaches?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “If you only remembered good stuff, it’d be stupid, and kind of fake. So roaches. And trash day in the bad parts of Central, if you want.”

“I don’t,” Roy says.

“How about cat vomi—”

“Edward.”

“Al’s already trying to figure out how many cats he can own before they arrest him for being a crazy motherfucker,” Ed says thoughtfully. “I think I’m doomed. And I’ll describe Al in detail for you sometime. Probably in a couple weeks, when he’s had time to fatten up—right now he kinda looks like a skeleton. The cutest and most amazing skeleton ever, obviously, but it freaks me out; I’m always thinking his ribs are just going to poke through his skin, and he’ll bleed to death.”

“I don’t believe there are any recorded cases of that in the entire span of medical history,” Roy says.

He can hear Edward’s smile this time, and he can tell that it’s thin and slightly crooked. “Yeah, well, Elrics are special.” The chair creaks, and thick-soled boots scuff on the linoleum—he’s standing up? “Take it easy, Colonel. Al’s just, like, two halls away, so I might as well stop by every now and then.”

“That’s terribly generous of you,” Roy says.

Now Ed must be grinning. “You’re damn right it is.” By the rhythm of the steps, he’s sauntering towards the door, possibly waving over one shoulder as though nothing has changed. “I’ll see you later, though I guess you can’t say the same.”

Roy’s useless eyes go so wide that he worries they’ll pop out. “ _You_ —”

Edward laughs brightly, which means that he probably doesn’t hear Roy shouting, “At least I can reach the top shelf, you little _shit_!”

 

 

“The trainer wouldn’t take any money,” Riza says, and Roy forces his hand to stay steady as she guides his wrist. Thick, soft fur greets his fingertips, and he resists the urge to cling to it. “I gather that her family has a great deal of military ties. Hitomi—” A softer tone of voice, clearly directed at the dog. “This is Roy. You’re going to be taking care of him now, understand? Here, sir.”

She lifts his hand again and positions his knuckles in a moist spot of air—the dog’s breath? There’s a damp touch, gentle but not tentative, which must be the dog’s nose. It sniffs at him, interestedly it seems, and he tries to remember what last he ate and whether it would appeal to a canine.

He needs to stop thinking of it as _the dog_. It’s not a tool so much as an ally in the war against his own infirmity.

That’s somewhat funny, after all of his lofty dreams to end war in Amestris once and for all. He’ll be fighting this one until the day he dies.

“Good girl,” Riza says—to the dog, although Roy experiences an extremely brief moment of bewilderment. “Pet her, sir. Scratch behind the ears a little—there you go. As a working dog, she won’t need as much affection, but it’s good to get properly introduced. Say hello, Hitomi.”

The dog barks, and Roy flinches.

“Give me your hand, sir,” Riza says, which is just peachy, since he doesn’t know what direction to move it. With undaunted firmness she catches his wrist again and turns his hand palm-up. “Hitomi, shake.”

The dog’s paw lands squarely in the center of his hand, and he starts in surprise again—not just at the suddenness; the sheer quantity of _textures_ is unexpected. There’s coarse fur and leathery pads and blunted nails and grains of dirt. Hitomi’s paw is steady and warm.

Roy curls his fingers around it and obediently shifts his hand up and down.

“Very good,” Riza says, and Roy isn’t quite sure who she’s talking to.

 

 

They take short walks with Riza and Hayate until they develop a system of cooperation.

Roy has to start being honest with himself. It’s not cooperation; it’s one-sided dependency. Yes, he feeds Hitomi, houses her, cleans up after her, and stands still with his mouth shut while Riza picks the hairs off of his uniform every morning, but the dog does not need him the way that he needs her. Her functional existence is not predicated on his presence, whereas he can’t so much as walk down the street-shaped dimness without her shoulder against his knee.

He carries a leash at first, loosely in one hand, but within the week they’ve silently agreed that it’s superfluous, and they simply walk in step. She nudges him to the left or peels off to the right and waits for him to follow; she stops at intersections and checkpoints, growling softly if he keeps moving, barking in small emergencies; she always maintains the same pace so that he’ll know that the terrain is uneven if she slows her stride. Soon Riza is assuring him that the two of them are more than capable of walking alone, and she’s right.

During the day, Hitomi sits or lies down on the floor beside Roy’s desk, and every now and again he can hear her curled tail brushing across the carpet. When incoming reports contain sensitive material, Riza reads them to him in a low voice; the rest Fuery records and rewinds so that Roy can listen to the tapes at his convenience. He expands Falman’s duties to include _human fact-checker, because Roy can no longer flip a page and check_. He turns his desk around to face the detectable brightness of the window, even though he hates having his back to the door; if he can’t feel the warmth of the sunlight on his face, it might as well not be there. Riza tells him he’s going to get a strange tan around the uniform, and he shoots a perplexed look in what ought to be her direction.

There is a strong possibility that Amestris is not prepared for a legally blind general, let alone for a Führer who can’t actually see what he’s signing into law. No one raises the question, but Roy’s ears have grown so sharp that he can sometimes hear the things that aren’t said aloud.

 

 

He has to drag himself out of bed Sunday mornings. Saturdays he listens to the reels and reels of tapes, either at the office or at home, taking notes on sheets of unlined paper that he holds at a consistent angle with his other hand. He’s not sure why he bothers; he won’t be able to read them later. It makes him feel better somehow. He tries to convince himself that transcription aids his memory, but mostly it’s another obsolescent habit. Mostly he can’t let go. Mostly there is a part of him still waiting to heal.

Riza makes him take Sundays off. She lies in wait at the office to chase him out if he arrives, and she’ll call him at home and _know_ if he’s working. He’s given up trying to outmaneuver her, so on Sundays, his fingertips walk along the nightstand to shut off the alarm, and he sits up and squints for the sun. He can hear Hitomi rousing and then panting, soft sounds audible over the rustle of the sheets; together they pad down the stairs to the kitchen for breakfast. He makes educated guesses about the volume of cereal he’s poured into the bowl and listens intently to the splash of the milk. There’s something terrifyingly fatalistic about the prospect that this will be normal someday—someday soon, perhaps.

They stroll, somewhat aimlessly, and Roy tries to pinpoint their location by the street crossings and the noises. It doesn’t matter where they go; if he whispers “Home” to Hitomi, she’ll lead them back. On Sundays, when he is left to his own devices, he tends to wonder what would happen if he whispered “Anywhere but here.”

They sit in the park, Roy on a bench with wooden slats, Hitomi by his knee. He strokes absently at her soft triangular ears; no point in getting a newspaper, obviously. It’s strange, the tiny things he has to ask for now—the things he simply cannot find for himself in the darkness. It’s strange how much quieter it is in his head without all of the information that he used to acquire with his eyes.

Someone is walking down the path, but he’s probably wrong. The individual hesitates, so perhaps not. The individual steps up to the bench and sit down next to him, and Hitomi does not react, so perhaps he’s learned a thing or two.

“Good to _see_ you,” Edward says.

“Someday,” Roy says, “when you are drunk, asleep, or otherwise defenseless, I am going to cut your hair and slather the paltry remnants with maple syrup and used chewing gum.”

“Creative.”

“I mean it,” Roy says.

He imagines that Ed is smiling to himself. Moments fall away; the breeze ripples through the grass.

“You look different,” Edward says.

“Consider that mirrors have lost meaning,” Roy says. “Consider that _appearance_ has lost meaning.”

“Do you shave just by feel?”

“Despite my best efforts, I have not yet mastered echolocation.”

Edward sounds vaguely impressed. “You’re… more independent than I expected from you.”

“I’m blind,” Roy says. “I’m not a different person.”

“Yes, you are,” Ed says.

There’s nothing to gain from this argument.

Roy listens to the wind shaking the leaves on the trees, to Hitomi shifting her paws against the dust and gravel at the edge of the path, to Edward Elric stretching until his spine pops alarmingly.

“I dream in color,” Roy says. “In thousands of colors, many of which I don’t think I remember from before. I’m not sure they ever existed in the first place.”

“I figured you might,” Edward says.

“Were you whole in your dreams?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “And usually Mom was around, although sometimes those were the worst ones. Depended on when I woke up.” He draws a breath and blows it out. Roy wonders if he still wears his bangs so long that they flutter away from his sighs. “Now I dream about alchemy. Guess you can’t win with the human brain. It knows what it wants, and it knows what it wants back.”

Faintly Roy hears the clank-clatter-grind of a chain, of rubber on pavement, and of slender metal spokes. Part of him wishes he’d learned to ride a bicycle back when he was capable of doing it; another part is glad he didn’t add one more thing to abandon.

“What have you been up to?” Roy asks.

“This and that,” Edward says. “I don’t know. It’s weird. You ever feel… just… lost?”

“Technically speaking,” Roy says, “I can never be entirely positive that I know where I am. To that extent, I think I’m always lost.”

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” Ed says. “I don’t think ‘lost’ is even the word I want. ‘Misplaced,’ maybe. Because… well, fuck, Colonel. After what we did? After all of the shit we went through? The life I’ve got now is too fucking small.”

“I never thought I would hear you utter those words.”

“Shut up. You know what I mean? I can’t… sit… on a farm fence and stare at clouds all day. I can’t hang around watching Winry tinker with other people’s automail. Honestly, when I decided to take my and Al’s fates into my own hands and play God, I walked out of that life forever, and I couldn’t cram myself back into it now if I tried. Do you ever feel like that?”

“Every day,” Roy says.

Edward slumps against the back of the bench. “I can’t believe my life peaked at fifteen.”

“That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

Ed snorts. “Not really.”

Roy runs his fingernails down the back of Hitomi’s skull, and she gives a quiet snuffle of approval. “I know what you mean,” he says. “It’s not that I _want_ another crisis, because that would be ludicrous, and the human cost of the last one was almost too much to bear. But there’s no denying that the danger gave life an entirely new significance. Going back to paperwork and budgetary approvals feels like…”

“Flatlining,” Edward says. “Like that was what real life is, and now we’re dead.”

“That’s a bit dramatic,” Roy says.

“It’s just physics,” Edward says. “We had a huge amount of potential energy at the top, and then it was kinetic as we were hurtling down through that trajectory, and then we hit the bottom and _stopped_.”

“I suppose we need to overcome our inertia,” Roy says.

“Very funny.”

“I was agreeing with you.”

“You were mocking me.”

“I was not.”

Edward sighs and gets up, either brushing off his clothes or… Roy doesn’t care to come up with an alternative explanation for that sound. “Well, either way, you’re a depressing invalid.”

“That’s rich,” Roy says, “coming from a midget with one leg.”

Edward snickers. “You want me to walk you home?”

“ _No_.”

“It’s a good thing you’re still a colonel,” Edward says. “It’s the only rank that doesn’t have any _I_ ’s.”

“The only one other than ‘sergeant’,” Roy says. “And ‘corporal’. And ‘major’. And ‘general’.”

“Fuck you,” Ed says.

“I can still set you on fire without seeing you,” Roy says.

“And I can still kick your ass with a metal foot,” Ed says.

Neither of them moves to execute their respective threats.

“I heard you can differentiate light and dark,” Ed says.

“To a degree,” Roy says. “I can identify light sources. I think I’m improving marginally, but it’s all still fairly muddled. You’re a darker gray blob against the less-opaque background, but I wouldn’t say I can make out your silhouette.”

“‘Blob’?” Ed says. “That’s rough. I haven’t gained _that_ much weight… yet. I keep forgetting I don’t have to eat for Al _or_ for nearly as much automail anymore. Do you have any idea how bad I would look fat?”

“I wouldn’t be able to tell,” Roy says. “I suppose your steps might be noticeably heavier, and your voice might change if enough fat cells accumulated in your throat—”

“That is fucking disgusting,” Ed says. “All right, Mustang—I’ll make you a deal. You prevent me from getting fat, and I’ll turn you into my personal anti-blindness science project.”

“That sounds terrible,” Roy says.

“I’ll be over for dinner tomorrow,” Edward says. “ _See_ you then.”

“I’m going to file a discrimination suit,” Roy says.

“No, you aren’t,” Ed says. “You’ve got a blind spot for me.”

“It’s a pity you’re such a small target.”


	2. Blindsided

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …I'll fix it, I promise.

Ed needs a drink.

Fuck Roy. Fuck him.

No, don’t fuck Roy. Never fuck Roy. Roy and fucking are incompatible.

Since when is he ‘Roy,’ anyway? _Fuck_. Or _definitely-no-fuck_. Both, whatever.

It’s funny how you acclimate to things in gasps of moments too tiny even to acknowledge as they pass. It’s funny how you get used to shit, over a couple of weeks; it’s funny how habits change; how people do; how you settle in and get comfortable and don’t even notice that you’ve put your feet up on a chair. It’s funny how when you stop and realize just how much is different, you really need a fucking _drink_.

Ed walks with his head low and his shoulders high, which is the default when he’s thinking too hard and trying not to think at all. He stops at the next corner and assesses the street he’s been storming along. There’s a set of stairs going down into the side of a building half a block away, above which there’s a sign that says _Evergreen’s_ with a pretty unambiguous picture of a bottle. Scouting mission accomplished; Ed should get a medal. He hunches his shoulders a little more and makes a beeline for the place.

The barroom is lively but not too loud, which is Ed’s preferred climate for not getting harassed while pickling a few of his overactive braincells. He’s just spooked. He just needs to take the edge off this shit. He just needs a drink.

There are a lot of cute girls wandering the premises, and they’re damningly un-distracting. Fuck, he might need two drinks. Ed weaves in between the scattered tables and drops onto a stool at the end of the bar, setting an elbow on the counter and running his hand through his hair. Maybe this was a bad choice of a venue after all; it’s kind of too warm in here. Well, too damn late—he needs that drink _now_.

It’s Roy’s fault. When is it not Roy’s fault? Roy is nine kinds of fucked up and ten kinds of fuckable.

No, wait, _shit_. Roy is not to be fucked. Roy is never to be fucked. Roy is not even to share sentences with the word “fuck” in a sexual context unless such a sentence is calling him out for being a manwhore—which he is, which is another reason not to fuck him, because he probably has several diseases and some strange fetishes and an intimidating amount of confidence.

The thing is that Roy’s different now. Roy’s kind of… not broken, really, but _bedraggled_. He’s kind of helpless, and he’s clearly trying not to be terrified of it, but that effort is floundering at best. He spends way too much time alone, with that dog behind him like a shadow. He’s driven and focused and intense—he’s not giving up, not on the uphill trek towards the Führership, at least—but the struggle is consuming him. Ed kind of knows how that shit goes. Roy’s one and only goal seems increasingly impossible, which means he’s fighting six times harder for it, which means that his obsession with it is eating him alive from the inside.

Worst of all—about a billion times worse than any of the quibbling, crappy details leading up to it—is that there’s something about kicked-puppy Roy that Ed just wants to… help. Fix. Touch, kind of gently, because the blind bastard still recoils from loud noises and unexpected contact.

Ed puts his head down on the counter, which fortunately looks fairly clean, and closes his eyes. Not an option. Not even the third cousin twice-removed of an option’s best friend’s gradeschool teacher’s uncle.

But the not-an-option thing is part of what makes it tantalizing. Of _course_.

Whoever mans the bar returns from a sojourn around the room and, if Ed’s well-honed sixth sense is not mistaken, leans against the counter from the other side. “What can I get y… hey, is that you, Boss?”

“Fuck,” Ed says. He lifts his head to confirm the tragic suspicion. Then he says, “I’m not your boss. I never was. I’ve never given you an order.”

Havoc beams. There’s a toothpick protruding from his grin instead of a cigarette. “I seem to recall that you once told me to quit dating altogether until I’d figured out who _I_ thought I was, because nobody worth having would stick around for what they hoped I might be someday.”

“That was pretentious as fuck,” Ed says. “I retroactively apologize.”

“Don’t,” Havoc says. “That’s the principle that got me my Becky-muffin.”

Ed thinks he may be experiencing an aneurysm. “Your…”

Hawkeye’s friend with the big hair sidles over, slips an arm around Havoc’s waist, and squeezes. “Believe me, Elric—you have not seen sexy until you’ve seen a man obliterating a firing range target from a wheelchair.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Ed says, “but that’s gross.”

Havoc stares at him. “Is… there… a right way to take that?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “By getting me a drink.”

Rebecca grins. “What’s your poison, jailbait?”

“I just wanna get buzzed and go home,” Ed says. “And I’m currently unemployed.”

“I’ve got just the thing.” Rebecca selects a bottle and pours him half a tumbler with considerable panache. “This stuff’s so cheap and so potent that we also use it to unclog the drains.”

“Bottoms up,” Ed says, uttering an inward prayer to the Science Gods on behalf of his tastebuds.

The Science Gods are not feeling merciful tonight.

Neither is Rebecca, who laughs and pounds him on the back until he stops coughing.

When the stars and firecrackers clear, he hears a tone to the ambient murmuring that he isn’t sure he likes. He swivels on the stool and glances towards the door, where there’s a very familiar newcomer with a very familiar dog.

Hitomi leads Roy to a barstool two down from Ed’s. The precision of her guidance is unbelievable—if Ed didn’t know Roy was utterly sightless in this mood lighting, didn’t know that the dog was the one calling the shots and giving the directions, he’d just assume that men in uniform could break the rules when it came to bringing pets.

Roy reaches out and brushes his hand against the edge of the counter, lowers it to graze the stool, and, having established the relative distances, slides onto the seat. Hitomi sits on the floor beside him, watching the other patrons with her head half-tilted, close enough that he’ll be able to feel the warmth of her body and know she hasn’t left him.

“Colonel!” Havoc says delightedly. “What can I do you for?”

“Proper grammar,” Roy says.

“That’s a lost cause,” Rebecca says. “If you want to mourn it, your first one’s on the house, sir.”

“I appreciate the sentiment,” Roy says, “but do you have anything for me that isn’t a liquid?”

Havoc and Rebecca exchange glances. Havoc shrugs. “The Lieutenant was going to swing by and pick it up tomorrow morning so that you and she could have show-and-tell later and all that.”

“I know,” Roy says. He holds his hand out. “Humor me.”

Havoc plucks the toothpick out of his mouth, licks his lips, and shrugs again. “Two shakes, sir.” He touches Rebecca’s arm and then darts off into the back room, the door swinging shut behind him.

Rebecca glances over at Ed, points at Roy, and mouths something indistinguishable. He glowers back—he’s allowed to take advantage of Roy’s blindness only because he’s _earned_ it.

Meanwhile, Roy takes out a grease pencil and starts doing his Surprisingly Good Student Thing on the bar counter in front of him, splaying out his left hand and tracing an even circle swiftly around it. He lifts his wrist, keeping the tip of his longest finger pressed down on the curve, and fills in all of the lines except for one diameter.

Havoc returns with a manila folder, blinks at the near-completed array, and then sets the folder down within Roy’s reach. “It’s right here, sir.”

Roy holds out his right hand again. “Give me a page with text.”

To the guy’s credit, Havoc barely hesitates. To Ed’s own, he doesn’t gasp aloud or anything stupid like that, even though he kind of wants to. Why doesn’t he ever get any leeway to be stupid in? Most people get to be stupid sometimes, but Ed can’t remember the last time he really had the luxury.

Havoc finds a suitable sheet and passes it to Roy, who flips it, flattens his left palm on it, and draws a single straight line using his handspan as a gauge. Then he flips the paper back over, takes the saltshaker full of phosphorous-compound flakes out of his pocket, dusts generously, and lays the altered sheet over the array.

The array glows. The air sharpens with the scent of ozone. And the letters light up.

So does Roy’s face.

Ed’s such a fucking sucker. Four times now, with all the testing—four times, and it still breaks his heart how Roy smiles at the words that he can read again.

Ed has to squint; most of the trial and error was to modify the luminescence to suit Roy’s impairment, and the result is too bright for normal people to look at for long. Ed figures that will probably double as a defensive mechanism, since nobody’s going to be reading over Roy’s shoulder anytime soon.

Roy scans the page and then shifts it, breaking the array and extinguishing the light. He raises his head towards a stunned Havoc and an astounded Rebecca, and he looks so fucking _happy_ that Ed feels like there’s a bramble in his throat.

“The kid is a genius,” Roy says. “Can you believe this? I don’t know how to begin saying ‘thank you’ for something like this.”

“You could start with buying me another drink,” Ed says, and his voice comes out sort of crackly.

Roy turns. His gaze is directed at Ed’s cheekbone. “Fancy meeting you here,” he says. His fingertips seek out the manila folder, and he slides the sheet back into it. “I thought you didn’t want to celebrate.”

“There’s nothing to celebrate,” Ed says. “It’s not perfect yet.”

Roy smiles thinly as he tucks his pencil back into his pocket. “What are you drinking?”

Ed swills his glass. “Aqueous arsenic, I think.”

“Port,” Roy says to the unnervingly quiet pair behind the counter. “Something halfway-decent, please, Jean.” Havoc hustles off to the wine rack. “You’ll like it, Edward; it’s sweet.”

“Unlike either of us,” Ed says.

Roy smiles a little wider. “Precisely.” He straightens the edge of the folder and then grasps the stem of the wineglass that Rebecca sets before him. “I tend to think it’s best to match your drink to your mood.”

“What if I’m still feeling bitter?” Ed says.

“Then match your mood to my drink.”

On another night, would that sound like a weird kind of come-on?

Ed drags a hand down his face. Al is going to kill him tomorrow, for real this time, possibly by smothering him with one of the cats while he sleeps.

 

 

“You want me to walk you home?” Ed asks.

“I know this may come as a surprise,” Roy says, “but I am not, in truth of fact, a twelve-year-old girl with a curfew.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Ed says. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Roy says. “Thank you, but Hitomi and I can handle it.”

“You’re sorta tipsy,” Ed says.

“But Hitomi is not.”

“Yeah, but what if you’re so tipsy that you actually _tip_? You could hurt yourself.”

“I believe you’re more intoxicated than I am, Edward.”

“‘Intoxicated’ is a stupid word.”

“I rest my case.”

“Well, rest your hand on my shoulder or something; I’m seeing you home. Not that you can see your home. Ha.”

“Wretch. If you insist. Lead on, then.”

 

 

Ed stands on the front step in the dark with the extremely-not-fuckable Roy Mustang, who reaches out with his left hand and finds the deadbolt mount on the first try. Hitomi sniffs at Ed’s boots a little while Roy fishes out his keys and unlocks the bolt and then the knob, turning it as he does to let them in. It didn’t really occur to Ed until now that Roy has been leaving the front light on these last few weeks entirely for his benefit.

As they move into the kitchen, Roy murmurs, “Pardon the mess,” which is kind of hilarious, because there’s no sign of the takeout containers they ate from, and he stacked all of the books that Ed had spread all over the kitchen table. “Let me get you a glass of water; you’ll thank me in the morning.”

“Sure,” Ed says. “I can thank you now, if you want.”

Roy just looks bemused as he bustles around the kitchen—like he’s thinking about something else and gazing into thin air while his hands dart deftly and efficiently to the cabinet for a glass, to the icebox, to the pitcher, back to the counter. He crouches and takes a dog bowl out of the lower cabinet; fills that with water, too; sets it down for Hitomi. He stands. He brushes at the wrinkles on his trousers, which is twice as impressive given that he must have predicted that they’d be there. He unbuttons his uniform jacket and moves towards the table, one arm held out low in front of him, until he touches the chairback to hang the garment on.

Ed sips at the water. He can’t think of anything to say that isn’t _Gee, you don’t even look blind half the time; well-done there_ or _How and why are you doing this to me?_

Roy straightens the shoulders of the jacket, fingertips grazing the little stars. “Do you need to call your brother and let him know where you are?”

“Nah,” Ed says. “He’ll figure I started making progress on the array and didn’t want to interrupt my brainwave.” That’s technically what happened. So why does it sound like an excuse? “He’ll probably be passed out anyway—it’s like he’s trying to catch up on all of the sleep he missed when he wasn’t capable of it.”

Roy nods, leaning back against the table and folding his arms. Staring into the middle distance, with his hair hanging just a little in his eyes, in his shirtsleeves and his trousers, he looks like… himself.

“I’d better go,” Ed says. He chugs the rest of the water for good measure, but then he can’t decide where to put the glass to make it easy for Roy to come across later.

“Finished?” Roy asks. “You can set it anywhere. If I’m not mistaken, it’s rather late—do you want me to call someone to walk you back?”

“Fuck no,” Ed says. “I didn’t trade my alchemy in for, like, hapless maidenhood or some shit. I can fend for myself, okay?”

Roy holds both hands up, palms out, with a twist of a smile. “I didn’t mean to imply anything like that. I’ve gotten more accustomed to accepting assistance lately, that’s all. New habits to replace the old ones.”

“Exactly,” Ed says. “My new habit is carrying three knives and a smokebomb. I got Lan Fan’s recipe; they’re kickass.”

“Where do you keep all of those weapons with so little surface area?” Roy asks, and he’s definitely smirking now.

“Like I’d tell you,” Ed says. “You’ll just have to strip me to find them.”

Fuck.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_.

“Edward,” Roy says.

“I’m going,” Ed says. “This is me, going. Away. Now.” He strides for the counter, but his hands are clammy, and his face is hot, and the glass slips, and he fumbles, and it—

—smashes into about six thousand pieces on the hardwood; fortunately Hitomi’s water dish is a couple feet away.

Ed forces himself to breathe. This is no big goddamn deal; what’s his problem? He drops shit all the time—of course he does; his arms still don’t quite match. “Shit. Sorry. Give me your pencil; I’ll draw you an array.”

Avoiding the shards, he kneels down and holds his hand out for the grease pencil before remembering that visual cues don’t work too great, _obviously_. Roy crosses over to him, both hands extended—the right finds the edge of the icebox; the fingers of the left brush the top of Ed’s head, and with those parameters he crouches down on the other side of the shattered glass. There are broad, ugly white scars on his hands from Bradley’s swords. The pencil’s in his breast pocket, and Ed doesn’t fucking think—just snatches it out and starts scribbling. Fuck the heat of Roy’s body; fuck how close they are; fuck Roy’s unfocused eyes; fuck his smug half-smile; fuck his pockets; fuck his glassware; fuck his floor.

“Edward,” Roy says.

The pencil squeaks, and Hitomi huffs, and Ed’s heart sounds like a piston in his ears. “What?”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. Perfect. Miraculous.” Two more sigils. One. “Okay, go for it.”

Roy gives Ed a slightly off-center _bitch, please_ look. “Yes, Edward; I’ll just plunge my hands into a pile of broken glass that I can’t see to navigate.”

Ed grinds his teeth loud enough that Roy can probably hear. “Asshole.”

“This is a strange mood swing. Was it something I said?”

“No.” Ed hesitates another second, and then he prods Roy’s right hand with the blunt end of the pencil. Roy takes it and slips it into his pocket again, and then he holds both hands out.

So Ed… kills it. Kills the feeling. Reins it in, traps it, crushes it down into stillness and silence. He grasps the sides of Roy’s hands and guides them down to touch the array.

The glass rises gleaming from the wreckage. It’s only literally that Ed’s lost his touch.

Neither he nor Roy starts moving. Why aren’t they moving? And why the fuck is Ed still holding onto both of Roy’s hands?

“Do you have a minute?” Roy asks.

Ed swallows, not without difficulty. “No.”

Roy rolls his eyes—and for the second time tonight he looks _real_.

His fingertips ghost up Ed’s forearms, flirt briefly with his shoulders, dart up the sides of his neck. What—? Ed gets a cataclysmic flood of goosebumps, and his mouth falls open, and his face pretty much spontaneously combusts—what in the _hell_ —

Roy looks incredibly fucking serious as he drags his fingertips along Ed’s jaw on either side. The pads of his thumbs settle under Ed’s chin, and his gaze is on the cabinet handle or something, and then he plants one knee on the floor and leans forward and presses his mouth to Ed’s.

He tastes like wine. Ed’s lips were already parted in surprise; Roy’s tongue is so hot that kissing him feels like drinking flame. He’s soft and sure and forceful, and he _burns_ —

“Holy shit,” Ed chokes out, scrambling back, falling, scrambling back more. “What the fuck is _wrong_ with you?”

Roy shifts to sit, spreading one hand on the floor. The other rises to tug at his collar, and either that hand is shaking, or Ed’s whole body is. “Oh,” Roy says.

And then he does the last thing Ed would have guessed in a million fucking years—he draws his knees up to his chest and starts to cry.

Ed’s skin goes numb. “I—fuck. Fuck. R—Colonel. I’m—sorry—I didn’t—you’re not—”

“Don’t be vain,” Roy says. His voice quavers just once. “It’s not about you. Subterfuge is my game, Edward. It’s the only game I’ve got. Reading people is significantly more difficult now, which could mean the end of my career—the end of everything, really. I thought that I had you interpreted, but evidently I was wrong.” He draws a white handkerchief from his trouser pocket and wipes his eyes. “It’s extremely irritating that these still perform all the functions that aren’t of any use.”

There’s a distant roaring in Ed’s ears, and a distant heaving in his chest. “You were _using_ me?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Roy says.

Ed’s feet are under him again. “What, then?” He hauls himself up using the counter for leverage, fighting not to shout and mostly failing. “What the fuck do you want me to be? What am I to you, a fucking plaything? A neat little tool to keep around the house for fixing shit? Is that how you see me now, Mustang?”

Roy’s eyes go from wide and bright to flat and cold. “That’s uncalled f—”

“Fuck you,” Ed says. “No, fuck _yourself_.”

He considers leaving the door open and hoping that some hungry wolves get in, but he ends up slamming it instead.


	3. Blind Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> …not a date.

Al is sitting at the kitchen table working on his university applications when Ed manages to direct his hangover-stagger into a chair.

“Well?” Al says without looking up.

Ed basks in not-standing for a minute before he drags his ass back out of the chair and goes in search of orange juice. “‘Well’ what?”

“Well, what happened?”

Ed focuses on pouring without spilling, which is difficult with his brain peeling away from the inside of his skull like this. “Nothing happened.”

He turns around and jumps, narrowly avoiding splashing orange juice everywhere. He’d kind of forgotten that even though Al has the Xerxesian eye color, he inherited Mom’s glare, and he knows how to use it.

“Don’t you lie to me, Edward Elric,” Al says. He got the lecture tone, too. How come all Ed inherited from Mom’s genome is the _height thing_?

Ed tries to swallow, finds his esophagus comparable to sandpaper, gulps down some orange juice, and swallows successfully on the next attempt. “I had a fight with that dumbass douchebag piece of shit I used to work for.”

Al’s eyebrows rise slowly. “Brother,” he says, “are you in love with Colonel Mustang?”

Only dumb luck and a sudden impulse to strangle the life out of something prevent Ed from dropping the second glass in twelve hours. “What? Al, c’mon—that’s—the craziest thing I’ve ever—I mean, who spiked your oatmeal with psychosis today?”

Al’s expression does not waver. “Answer the question, Ed. Are you, or aren’t you?”

Ed puts the glass down on the countertop before he can do any more damage. He presses the knuckles of both hands into his eyes.

“I’m not,” he says. He lowers his hands again. “Not anymore.”

And then everything about Al’s face changes. Somehow it hurts more when somebody else cares.

“What _happened_?” Al asks, planting both palms on the table. His forearms tremble as he tries to put his weight on them. “What did that bastard _do_ to y—”

“Don’t get up!” Ed says, waving at him like a crazy person. Or maybe _as_ a crazy person; the debate’s probably over by now. “Look, he just—tried to make out with me. That’s all.”

“That’s harassment,” Al says.

Ed massages at his right temple and picks up the orange juice. “I guess.”

Al’s eyes narrow again. “Why aren’t you up in arms about this?”

Ed scratches with his fingernail at a spot of something stuck on the glass. “What’s the point in getting pissed?”

“The point is that this isn’t _like_ you,” Al says. “Normally, if somebody made a pass at you, they’d be lucky to get away with all of their vital organs intact. There’s a displaced variable here.”

Shit. There’s the science. It’s over.

Al frowns, but only for a second and a half. “This doesn’t add up. ‘Not anymore,’ Brother? What does that mean? You were in love with him until he tried to pursue it, at which point you balked?”

“I’m not playing twenty hypothetical questions with you,” Ed says.

“They’re not going to be hypotheses for long,” Al says, because… science. Ed never should have taught him how to use it. “It was too real for you, wasn’t it? Too hard to control—and if it was no longer just you, turning it over in your head, then there wouldn’t be any escaping it. It meant commitment, and it meant opportunities for all of the fantasies to go horribly wrong. And you couldn’t take that kind of a chance. You couldn’t risk yourself like that, because you’re too scared of your own feelings.”

Ed looks down at his right hand, curling and uncurling his fingers.

“Brother,” Al says, more softly now, “can’t you at least try? Of all people… Colonel Mustang understands. He understands all of it. I love Winry more than I can put into words, and I know you do, too, but she could never… she just… hasn’t lived it. Hasn’t lived like we have, on the edge, in the fire. But he has. You’d never have to explain yourself to him. How often is a chance like that going to come along, Ed? How often are you going to find someone who knows everything there is to know about you and wants you anyway?”

Ed swallows. “You should apply to the department of amateur psychoanalysis instead.”

“You know very well I’d never apply to any program but alchemy,” Al says. “And under ‘education’ I’ve just written ‘Izumi Curtis’ and her phone number. Besides, it’s not psychology; it’s matchmaking.”

“I’m going out,” Ed says, emptying his juice glass and starting for the front hall.

Al swivels in his chair. “Don’t pout.”

“I’m not,” Ed says. “I’m just going to run down to the pharmacy and get some painkillers. There’s a drumline in my head right now, and they suck at keeping time.”

“I’ve got some of mine left,” Al says.

“Yeah,” Ed says, “but those knock you out like a tranquilizer. I don’t even want to know what they’d do to my body mass. It’s fine.”

He glances over as he shoulders on his jacket and accidentally ends up meeting Al’s eyes.

“Brother,” Al says. “You need more than this. You can’t forsake him just for trying to give it to you.”

“Whatever,” Ed says, and he swings open the door.

Roy is standing on the step with one hand raised to knock. The rush of air makes his long black coat swirl, and Hitomi tilts her head.

“…hello?” Roy says tentatively.

“Fuck,” Ed says.

“Good morning to you, too,” Roy says.

“It’s not a good morning,” Ed says. “What do you want?”

“ _Brother_!” Al calls, sounding horrified. “Invite him in!”

“I was going to,” Ed says, “except I don’t know if Hitomi would get along with your fleabags.”

“They don’t have fleas. And you don’t have manners.”

“It’s quite all right,” Roy says. “I just came by to apologize. And to reimburse you.”

Ed’s too close. There’s a little chapped spot on Roy’s lower lip, and the collar of his shirt isn’t settled quite right under his uniform and his coat. “What?”

“For the array,” Roy says. He’s taken out his wallet and deftly started thumbing through. Every denomination of bill is folded in a different way. There’s a small scrape across his left-hand knuckles, and he’s selecting… a lot of money. A _lot_. And he’s holding it out to Ed. “I don’t believe we agreed on a formal commission, but I hope this is fair.”

Ed feels like a marionette with the strings cut. “I can’t take that.”

“Edward, you restored my livelihood. While Sergeant Fuery has developed something of a talent for dramatic readings, I strongly prefer independence in my work, and you’ve given that back to me.”

“Well, I can’t take that,” Ed says. “The array’s not even finished yet.”

“I wasn’t sure if you intended to continue,” Roy says, and his eyes shift away from their almost-focus on Ed’s forehead. “If you do, I’ll top this up later.”

Roy’s hair is getting too long. He needs to have it cut. It’s trailing over his ears. Ed forces some spit down his throat. “I can’t—”

“Brother,” Al says. “We kind of need the money.”

Ed whirls around. “Now who has no manners, _Al_?”

“This isn’t about me,” Al says. “This is about your pride. And your impressive lack of business acumen.”

“Harsh,” Roy says.

“Shut up,” Ed says, and then wishes he hadn’t.

Roy raises his eyebrows and then the bills. “I’ll just deposit them in your account if you don’t take them, Ed.”

“Bastard,” Ed says.

“Shame on me,” Roy says. “Trying to pay you honest wages for honest work.”

Ed starts to reach out and then hesitates halfway. “Look, I’m serious about it not being finished y—”

“Then let’s finish it,” Roy says.

“And I meant to make you, like, a bunch of pens you can give to your team with ink that’s even easier to illuminate, so that you can read their notes. I mean, you still won’t be able to read Breda’s, because his handwriting is an abomination, but at least in theory.”

“We can write up a contract for that,” Roy says.

“I don’t want a fucking contract,” Ed says. “I just want you to stop sulking and get back to taking this country by storm.”

“First you have to take the money, Edward,” Roy says. “I’m afraid we will almost certainly remain a capitalist state even if I do ascend to the Führer’s seat.”

“Smartass,” Ed says. His hand seems to stick in the air for another second, and then he snatches the folded cash from between Roy’s fingertips. “Happy now?”

“Positively tickled,” Roy says. “I’ll see you this evening, then?”

“Technically not,” Ed says.

Roy grins. “I walked into that one. Good day, Alphonse.”

“Thank you for paying the rent, sir,” Al says.

Roy smiles a little more, clicks his tongue, and turns, Hitomi helping him down the steps. He holds himself differently now than he did the first few weeks—taller, straighter. He takes up more space.

Ed closes the door. “I hate you, Al.”

“No, you don’t,” Al says. He’s right, and also a snarky little bitch. “This is _good_ , Brother. It’s giving you something to hold onto.”

“I’d rather hold onto a lava-coated crocodile that’s spitting acid,” Ed says.

“He didn’t retaliate,” Al says. “When you made the extremely insensitive blind joke. He cares about you, Ed.”

“He cares about his job,” Ed says, jamming the money into his pocket and opening the door again. “I’m just doing what’s best for Amestris, okay?”

He can feel Al’s gaze on his back. “Who exactly do you expect to do what’s best for _you_?”

He closes the door behind him and pretends he hasn’t heard.

 

 

“Fuck this crappy piece of shit,” Ed says.

Roy doesn’t even look up from the glowing text of a report. “Well, don’t mince words, Ed.”

Dick. Ed tosses the pathetic excuse for a pen down onto the coffee table, which looks like it was hit by an alchemy bomb. “This way is stupidly inefficient. What we need is a bunch of really nice pens where it’s easy to replace the ink—it’d be best if we could just pour it in, y’know, instead of having to manufacture cartridges.”

“That sounds simple,” Roy says.

Ed’s blood goes from _tepid_ to _boiling_ without missing a beat. “ _Simp_ —” Except… “Hang on, maybe—maybe it _is_.” He grabs another piece of scratch paper and hunches over it. “If the pens aren’t good enough, we’re just going to have to make a better pen.”

“I have turned the world’s savior into a stationery engineer,” Roy says. “I will now accept my prize.”

“Shove it,” Ed says. “You must’ve been a scientist once, or you wouldn’t know all of those cute little party tricks.”

“What kind of parties have _you_ been attending?”

Roy’s grinning. And Ed’s grinning back, because Roy is just so fucking _alive_ right now, and the lines of text are shining in his eyes.

At the pause—can the guy _hear_ smiles now? Ed wouldn’t put it past him—Roy raises his head and looks more or less at Ed.

Ed’s finally starting to learn that he can’t afford to spend time staring at Roy Mustang, so he ducks to the diagrams again. This is going to be the ass-kickingest pen in the history of writing instruments, and it deserves his full attention.

“Can I take you out to dinner tomorrow night?” Roy asks.

He should probably reinforce the back end; Havoc chews on pens when Hawkeye won’t let him have a cigarette. “You mean like a business thing?” Ed says. “Free food for shop talk?”

“If you like,” Roy says.

“Sure,” Ed says. If he _embeds_ the cartridge and makes the back end removable—it won’t be perfect, but— “You have a place in mind?”

“Is Cretan all right?”

Ed snorts. “C’mon, Colonel, you know I’ll eat anything.”

“I thought it would be considerate to check. Shall I set the reservation for half-past seven? Havoc and I can stop by to pick you up shortly before.”

Okay, something is off here, and it’s not the inking consistency of Ed’s tip design. “That’s… fine, yeah.”

Roy’s still sitting on the couch, leaning back with the report in his hand, legs crossed at the knee. “The dress code is fairly formal, I’m afraid.”

“I guess that’s fine,” Ed says.

Roy stops reading, glancing in Ed’s direction so that Ed will see the raised eyebrows and the wry smile. “You… can handle semi-formal?”

Ed scowls at him. It’s a matter of principle these days. “What do you want me to say, that I promise I’ll let Al pick my outfit?”

Roy appears to be trying not to laugh. “Well… yes.”

“The first road test of this pen,” Ed says, “is going to be stabbing you with it.”

“Surely I don’t deserve to be perforated with a prototype simply because I appreciate the finer things in life.”

“Skulls and spikes and shit _are_ the finer things in life.”

“I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on the subject.”

“Seven-fifteen tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Not allowed to dress myself?”

“If you’d be so kind.”

“Fine.”

“Lovely.”

 

 

“It’s not a date,” Ed says for the four-hundredth and thirty-sixth time, give or take.

“If it looks like a date,” Al says, “acts like a date, talks like a date, dresses like a date, and chauffeurs you to a nice restaurant like a date, I can’t help being suspicious. Red or green?”

Ed is wearing a white shirt and black slacks right now. Unless Roy’s problem is rubbing off as colorblindness… “What?”

Al leans on his cane and gestures to the closet, where he’s isolated two waistcoats. “Red or green?”

Ed stares. “You’ve had a body for two months, and you already own twice as much clothing as I do.”

“That’s because I believe in making first impressions with my appearance,” Al says, “rather than with my fists.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Ed says. “He can’t see anyway.”

“But other people will see you with him,” Al says.

“I don’t give a shit about other people,” Ed says.

“Colonel Mustang does,” Al says. “Don’t you want him to sense that other people are jealous of him?”

“For the four-hundredth and thirty-seventh time,” Ed says, “ _it’s not a date_.”

 

 

He ends up going with red, because at least it’s familiar, unlike everything else in this stupid not-a-date situation. The doorbell rings at sixteen minutes after seven, and Havoc’s at the door.

“Hiya, boss,” he says. “Lookin’ snappy. Ready for your date?”

“ _Not a date_ ,” Ed says, pushing past him. “Later, Al.”

“Enjoy your date,” Al says.

Ed grinds his teeth as he starts down the front walk with Havoc trailing. “You’re going to wake up to a mattress full of maggots one of these days.”

“Love you, too,” Al says. “Have fun!”

Ed jerks the back door of the car open, slides in, and slams it again. Hitomi, who was lying on the middle seat, sits up and looks scandalized.

Roy rubs a fingertip behind one of her ears. “How are you?”

“Pissed,” Ed says.

“I hope you mean ‘I’m irritated,’” Roy says; “not ‘I pre-gamed, and I’m drunk.’”

Ed eyes him. “Pre-gaming dinner sounds sketchy as fuck.”

“Clearly you have never suffered through a diplomatic function.”

“You’re going to have to host that shit when you’re Führer, you know,” Ed says.

“Then the liquor will be mandatory.”

Ed hates this new Roy—funny, nice, vulnerable, reasonable, _real_ Roy. He hates how this new Roy tears down the walls like they’re made of tissue paper.

Havoc slips into the front seat and guns the engine, beaming at them in the rearview mirror. “So—how long am I on call for? You gents planning on dessert, or _dessert_?”

“ _It’s not a date_ ,” Ed hisses.

“Please just drive, Lieutenant,” Roy says.

 

 

“She’s a service animal,” Roy says to the slightly startled maître d’. “You’ll find the reservation under ‘Mustang.’”

“Oh,” the man says. “ _Oh_. Right this way, sir, thank you…”

Hitomi curls up next to Roy’s chair, and he opens the menu calmly. Stupidly, Ed gives him a long onceover—he looks like he’s actually skimming the page. He also looks… really, really good. He looks polished and natural and smooth and worldly and cultured, and Ed gets now why Al was so insistent about dressing well. Al should’ve given it up, though, because there’s no way Ed could ever match Roy in a place like this—in his element, in a fitted shirt and a narrow tie, outshining everybody in this whole stupid building even though he’s wearing shades of gray.

“Have you had a chance to decide?” Roy asks. His fingertips skim over the tablecloth, finding his wineglass, the edge of the plate, the napkin, the silverware.

“Uh.” Ed glances at the menu. Most of the items look edible, so he’ll just pick one. “Have you?”

“I always order the special,” Roy says. “Saves a lot of time. It’s a bit reckless, but more often than not I’m pleasantly surprised.”

“It’s not reckless,” Ed says. “It’s brave.”

Roy smiles. “I’ve been told before that I should take credit when it’s offered, but that’s a bit much.”

Ed orders some kind of thing with steak in it that the douchewad chef decided to list in Cretan with all of the accented letters intact. Roy coughs instead of laughing at him as he mangles the pronunciation, and then no more than the words “The special, please” emerging from Roy Mustang’s mouth make their waitress go noticeably gooey-eyed.

“What are we doing here?” Ed asks when she floats away.

Roy tilts his head a bit. Ed can’t help wondering if he picked that up from the dog. “Last I checked, we were having a meal.”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Ed says. “What are _you_ and _I_ doing in _this_ restaurant, _now_?”

Roy pauses. He swallows, and then he wets his lips with his tongue, and Ed tries to be _really_ fucking interested in his place setting.

“It seems to me,” Roy says, “that both of us are trying to reestablish a baseline of normalcy in our lives. I began to think that… perhaps this is the way to start.”

“Cretan food,” Ed says. “Cretan food is the way to reestablish normalcy.”

“You can be distressingly literal when it suits you,” Roy says.

“Everything suits me,” Ed says.

Roy gestures to his eyes, smiling thinly. “I wouldn’t know. What are you wearing?”

Ed’s cheeks ignite. “Wh— _what_?”

“I can’t see it for myself, Edward. I’d like to imagine. Is it Alphonse’s handiwork?”

Ed stares disbelievingly. “Are you trying to have _phone sex_ with me _across a table_?”

…oops. That might have been a touch too loud.

Roy covers his mouth as he laughs. “That was called ‘flirting,’ Edward. Where have you been all your life?”

“Getting shit done,” Ed says. “Ever tried it?”

“I dabble,” Roy says. “You’ve missed things, Ed. You gave up your innocence early, and that is a different matter entirely from losing it over time. There are a lot of things you’ve never had.”

Ed can’t help bristling. He made his choices, and he set things right, and it’s always been too late to start over, so there’s no damn point in harping. “Like what?”

“Like this,” Roy says. “You’ve never had a dinner like this—never been catered to, so extravagantly that it’s uncomfortable. You’ve never mixed with the so-called cream of society, in large part just so that you can mock them more effectively later on. You’ve never been spoiled. Am I right?”

The waitress is back with whatever kind of wine it is Roy wanted this time. She pours for him, and he thanks her, and she goes gooey, and then she turns to Ed with a non-judgmental quizzical look that he grudgingly appreciates.

“No, thanks,” he says. “I’m never drinking with this bastard again.”

There goes the non-judgmental thing.

Roy swills his wine cautiously and smells it, but not in an obviously-sniffing-it kind of way. “You should experience the things you’ve missed—at least to try them once.”

Maybe Ed should’ve gone for the wine after all; his mouth is kind of dry. “Look, that sounds great in theory, but—”

“But what?” Roy asks. “Life is short, Edward. Why don’t we make enjoying it the new normal?”

Ed bares his teeth. “Who you callin’ so small he can’t even fill up a lifespan?”

Roy winks broadly. “I should have seen that coming.”

And just like that, Ed figures out that he’s fucked.


	4. Sight Unseen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a very poorly-kept secret that I'm in love with Major Miles.

Days flick by, even if Roy can’t track them. Darkness is a lot like silence, somehow, and he tries to fill it with illuminated words and long strolls down the park paths and the sound of Ed’s laughter. He stuffs the space with imagined images—Ed’s eyes, Ed’s hands, Ed’s hair, Ed’s grin.

His concept of the calendar grows progressively more muddied, but Riza always gently guides him back to rights. And so they reach the morning when he and Riza get on a train heading East. Their first stop is half political and half impolitic.

It’s understandable that Mrs. Bradley wouldn’t want to continue living in the house where she raised a family that the Promised Day destroyed. Riza stays by the front gate of the new mansion to suss out the security contingent’s side of things, and a servant leads Roy and Hitomi into the parlor where Mrs. Bradley is taking her morning tea.

“Colonel!” she says warmly. “Your timing is impeccable, as always. Can I get you a cup?”

“I’m quite all right, thank you,” Roy says. Hitomi noses at his knee; he reaches out, finds the arm of a silk-upholstered settee, and sinks down onto it carefully. The cushion is lower than he had anticipated, which leaves him momentarily startled. Hitomi sets her chin on his knee, and he lays his hand on her head. “We don’t have too long until the connecting train leaves, but I wanted to stop by. How is everything?”

“About as good as I could hope for,” Mrs. Bradley says, and he hears the saucer rattling—he can’t tell whether she’s lifting the teacup or setting it down; “considering… everything. All that’s happened.”

Roy smiles faintly. “I know what you mean.” He bests the impulse to hesitate. “How is Selim?”

“The doctors were terribly worried initially, of course,” Mrs. Bradley says, and her voice swells with… well, _pride_. “But he’s showing them all a thing or two.”

Roy always suspected that Bradley chose this woman for his wife because he knew something—because he saw something in her that was worth holding onto, even if it jeopardized his cause. And Roy thinks that it was the hint of steel that he’s uncovered now. No one is going to take what remains of Mrs. Bradley’s family away from her.

“And how are you, Colonel?”

“Grateful,” Roy says.

She stirs, spoon clinking on porcelain, and sips. “Still have your eye on my late husband’s job?”

“Figuratively speaking,” Roy says. It’s the perfect lead-in to the question he came to ask. He wonders whether that was deliberate on her part. “What do you think, ma’am? As things stand, do I have a shot?”

“I think it’s a shot in the dark,” Mrs. Bradley says. “Which I imagine is your specialty.”

Given all the conspiracy theories that have _come true_ in recent experience, it doesn’t seem outlandish to wonder if Edward and Mrs. Bradley have been sharing blind jokes.

“Thank you,” Roy says. “…I think.”

“You’re very welcome, dear.”

He can’t quite bring himself to ask the other question, let alone its corollaries. It would be a bit untoward to break into teatime with _How much further can I go? How much abnormality will they accept? How much of myself am I allowed to be?_

_Can I have him and still have the country?_

“Good morning, Mrs. Bradley,” Riza says from the doorway, and he automatically turns his head towards her. “Sir?”

“I believe that’s my cue,” Roy says.

Mrs. Bradley sets her teacup down again. “Travel safely, Colonel.”

 

 

The first step from the paved train platform down to the dust makes his spine go so tense that his whole body aches. He’s not ready. He can’t be here—not here, now, again. He can’t take the way the sand gives under his boot treads; can’t handle the hot, dead air drawing sweat from his gloved palms; can’t breathe the dust and the desert and the evaporated blood. His heart pounds and his lungs seize and his body goes _still_ ; the merciless sunlight is pale gray and everywhere.

Riza touches his shoulder. “The—the skyline is different, sir.”

He swallows grit. “I imagine they must have had to rebuild a great deal, but it never… occurred to me. I always somehow thought it would just…”

“Stay the same,” Riza says. “Stay the way we left it.”

They’re quiet for a moment, although the wind is not. Hitomi shuffles her paws uncomfortably; sand is new to her, and probably rather unpleasant. Roy doesn’t have to ask Riza whether she’s wishing, too—wishing that Hughes was here. It would fit. It would help. It would be a cleaner way to close the wound. And Maes Hughes always knew what to do when there was nothing to be said.

Several people are approaching, and their footfalls crunch through sand and what sounds more like gravel.

“Welcome,” a deep male voice says. “I understand you’re already acquainted with my colleagues.”

“Colonel.” Roy recognizes Miles’s voice, and he hears the man’s heels meet—presumably part of the sort of salute that Olivier Armstrong expects, of which Roy could only dream. “Lieutenant.”

“Major,” Roy says.

There’s a pause.

“Nice dog,” Scar—no longer Scar—the man who used to identify himself as Scar and who has apparently since forsaken nomenclature altogether—remarks.

“Thank you,” Roy says.

 

 

They tour the city and then dine with Miles, ex-Scar, and the third man who greeted them—a prominent spiritual leader, and apparently Scar’s master in the Ishvalan warrior priesthood once upon a time, who has asked that they call him Grant. Roy will call him Snookums Babycakes if someone will get a bowl of water for Hitomi; her panting took on a slightly raspy tone half an hour ago.

It’s unsettlingly surreal to be back here and to find it so totally _changed_. Roy can only imagine how jarring it is for Riza, who can see the crowds in the marketplace; the reconstructed houses; the children darting through the dust, shrieking with laughter, dropping to their knees next to Hitomi, asking if she’s allowed to have some of the jerky they bought. Conversations stutter but don’t stop when the two of them walk by in military blue. Roy tucks his gloves into his pocket and leaves them there. There are _people_ in this city, people who live and breathe and move—people who are not afraid. There are people carrying on.

He and Riza meet dozens of them: religious figures, a mayor, lawmakers, educators, parents, survivors, farmers, shopkeepers, friends. Ex-Scar is a wonder, bizarrely enough; he’s genial, knowledgeable, and pithy to the last. Miles is cordial and dignified and invested. They have a chance here. It’s beautiful. Roy just keeps shaking hands, and none of them burn.

They stay two full days. The night before their departure on the first available train, Grant asks if Roy will join him in the new temple before they go.

Roy’s too cold a scientist to subscribe to religion—and too terrified a human to admit the possibility that he might not be in control of his existence. He’s always respected the practice, however, and certainly the faith. What he cannot understand is why so many holy rites take place so unholily early.

Just before dawn, Grant lays a hand on his shoulder and guides him into a cool, drafty building. “Watch your step in just a moment… Off to our left now. Stairs, I’m afraid…” By the echo of their steps and the particular insulation of the air, the walls and the floor must be marble or something of its ilk. “Another left turn here. A little ways ahead. There. If you’d be so kind…”

Roy kneels and finds himself settling on a small, thick rug. Hitomi’s nails click on the floor as she sits with her tail twitching at the edge.

“Directly in front of us,” Grant says, and by the closeness of his voice, he’s knelt as well; “is a wide window that looks out over the whole of this city. The market is just a few streets down, and unless there’s a dust storm, you can watch the trains disappear over the horizon. This early, of course, it’s all still shuttered down there—sleeping, peacefully these days. This is my favorite time to be up here.” He shifts, and by the angle of his voice this time, it was to face Roy beside him. “Colonel, will you pray with me?”

Roy takes a deep breath and smiles tentatively. “Sir, I… it would feel like an act of disrespect.”

“You don’t have to be pious to be heard,” Grant says.

Roy draws a deeper breath. He can smell the beginnings of the heat. “I want nothing but prosperity for Ishval. I feel it would tarnish my sincerity to pretend to pray for change, rather than enacting it in every way I’m capable.”

“Then pray for something selfish,” Grant says. “If I’m not mistaken, Colonel, you are one of the rare men who recognizes every sunrise as a privilege. Ask Ishvala for something small—for a whim. Should He bestow it, it will please you; should He not, the sun will continue to rise.”

Roy smiles a little wider, closes his eyes, and folds his hands.

 

 

He dozes on the train, which leaves him more bleary than refreshed. They were due to arrive in the early evening, but when at last they reach the station, he’s lost track of time.

Riza hops off almost as soon as they’ve halted, taking their luggage to go find their driver in the crush of humanity on the platform, but Roy waits a few minutes for most of the passengers to clear—Hitomi’s not overly fond of large numbers of strangers, and nowadays neither is Roy. A momentary delay is certainly not too high a price to pay in avoidance of elbow-shaped bruises and possibly a falling suitcase to the head.

Hitomi barks softly to warn him about the steepness of the train car’s exit stairs, but Roy remembers them just fine. He holds tight to the bar and takes them slowly, settling a few fingertips behind Hitomi’s ear again when they’re on level ground.

“Colonel!” Ed’s voice calls.

He turns towards the sound like a flower to the light, which is foolish but inevitable.

“Guess what?” Edward asks, from much closer this time. “Hayate got along great with all of Al’s cats, so apparently he’s allowed to come over whenever he wants.” Roy has turned the world’s savior into a stationery engineer, and Riza has turned him into a dog-sitter. “I figured I’d bring him to meet you guys, since Lieutenant Hawkeye probably misses him like crazy.”

“I ima—”

Ed’s laughter stops him short. “Holy crap! That was the cutest thing I’ve ever seen—he and Hitomi said ‘hi’ by sniffing at each other’s faces.”

“Arguably that’s more logical than human greetings,” Roy says. “They’re getting all kinds of sensory information from the scents.”

Without any sort of warning, there’s a leash swinging against his shin, and Hitomi shuffles back in surprise, and Ed’s arms have been flung around his neck, and Ed is kissing him—inexpertly, but with a great deal of enthusiasm.

His head is throbbing and spinning at turns as he is released. He’s not sure whether he’s aiming his incredulous stare in the right direction.

“I dunno,” Edward says. “I got a lot of sensory information from that. What the hell have you been _eating_ , Colonel?”

“Wiseass little runts like you,” Roy says, slightly breathlessly. “For breakfast.” He tries to clear his head by force of will, but it feels like there’s a pinball ricocheting around inside his skull. “What—was that?”

“What’d it feel like?” Ed asks, and Roy can picture the disgruntled expression from his tone. “I mean, I bet the lieutenant _does_ want to see her dog, but mostly I’m here because I missed you, dipshit.”

Roy opens his mouth. He shuts it. He opens it again. He says, “How romantic.”

Ed snorts, but by the brightness in his voice he’s grinning again. “Asshole.”

This can’t be right, can it? They parted on good terms—with one of Edward’s patented tackle-hugs, followed by a mumbled “ _See_ you later, okay?”—but it wasn’t anything like… this.

“It’s fucking boring without you around,” Ed says. “I made, like, twenty different pens, and I took Hayate to every park in the city, and while I was working on the ink I found a way to dye hair pink with alchemy and set up an array that Al would activate if he rolled over in his sleep, and then he tried to kill me with a frying pan—”

“That doesn’t sound boring,” Roy says.

“Maybe ‘boring’ wasn’t the word I wanted,” Edward says. “Plus I miss the free dinners. Food helps stimulate my creativity, you know.”

Roy can’t afford to think about stimulating Ed. “Is that the latest excuse?”

“It’s not an _excuse_ ,” Ed says. “It’s a rational explanation of an observed phenomenon.”

With Roy as exhausted as he is, Ed’s every-second intensity should be making him tireder, but somehow the opposite is true. “Would you like to do takeout at my place?”

“Would you like to pay for it?” Edward asks.

“That depends on your definition of ‘like,’” Roy says.

Hayate barks, and Roy can just make out his tags jingling and his paws pattering over the station noise. Roy’s fairly sure he knows what that means.

“Sir,” Riza says, “Lieutenant Havoc is parked out by the curb whenever you’re ready. Good evening, Edward. And _hello_ to you, too, Hayate.” Her voice emanates from lower—she’s kneeling—and Hayate whimpers with sheer delight. “Have you been good for Edward?”

“He was amazing,” Ed says. “Can I hitch a ride with you guys?”

 

 

Roy unlocks the door and lets them in, holding it open for Hitomi and then for Ed. “Would you give me a minute to change? There is sand in places sand was never meant to go.”

“Sure,” Ed says. There’s a faint thump, followed by a hiss of: “ _Shit_! Fucking _shoe rack_. Why do you even have that motherfucking thing?”

“Because I own more than two pairs of shoes,” Roy says. “Here.” A quick tactile survey of the wall next to the door finds the lightswitch for the foyer, which he flips.

“On the upside,” Ed says, and Roy can hear the wince in his voice, “you probably save a pretty penny on electricity this way, huh?”

“Only to spend spend many more pennies feeding you,” Roy says. “I’ll be right back. Don’t spoil dinner.”

The first week, Riza helped Roy develop a system of tags that they sewed into of all of his clothing—every article now has a small swatch of fabric attached to an inner seam, upon which an embroidered description that he can read with his fingertips delineates the color and style of the item, as well as any distinguishing details. Roy can keep his uniform shirts separate from his personal purchases, for instance; additionally, blind or no, he decided early on that he’d rather die than wear clashing colors in public. Since this is just a dinner run, and it’s late, and he’s starving, and every second that passes raises the odds that Edward will plunder the cookie jar, he doesn’t fuss too much tonight.

Hitomi pads back down the stairs with him, and he holds onto the railing tightly—which pays off when he almost slips on the slick tile floor at the bottom.

“You ever think about getting a smaller house?” Ed asks.

“Occasionally,” Roy says, petting Hitomi when she noses anxiously at his now-steady knee. “But… is it strange to be… scared? Of moving into a place I’ve never seen and never will, I mean. It’s highly irrational, and I do think it would be more manageable to downsize, but I still envision this place as I move through it. I’m not sure I could think of a building as ‘home’ if it was just a set of walls and shadows that I’d sorted out by touch.”

“Colonel,” Ed says, “you’re not exactly talking to the homemaker of the year here.”

Roy has heard about the scorched earth and crumbling beams at the top of a hill in Resembool. “Conceded. Hungry?”

“Wasting away,” Ed says. “Uh, hang on.” There is a pause, and then there are approaching steps, and then there are soft fingers fluttering at Roy’s shirt buttons. “How’d you get to be a colonel without knowing how to put your fucking clothes on? You did these up _wrong_ , you know. I’m not getting takeout with you looking like a sloppy drunk.”

“Getting sloppily drunk sounds fairly amenable right now,” Roy says.

Ed’s fingers hesitate. “Roy,” he says slowly, “you are a fucking dumbass sometimes, okay? And I only feel obligated to tell you that because I _care_ about you. If I didn’t, I would just let you be a fucking dumbass and hope it ended up hurting you later. So if you’re doing some sort of tortured-hero-suppressed-feelings thing, knock it the fuck off. I want to hear it. I understand the temptation—I pull that kind of bullshit, too, all the time. But you don’t _have_ to, okay?”

Ed doesn’t understand the temptation. The temptation is to need him, and if Roy gives in, neither of them will ever get out again. Roy won’t force that on him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Thank you.”

Ed grumbles something unintelligible and tugs at Roy’s collar. Then he smoothes Roy’s shirtfront, and it takes all of Roy’s willpower not to shiver and lean right into that touch. “All right, you’re presentable. Let’s get some food before we starve.”

Something changed. Something changed while Roy was digging his demons from the sand. Edward keeps the insults to a minimum, keeps the conversation light and bouncing, keeps touching Roy’s arm—which tingles in spite of the thick sleeve of his coat.

Ed goes conspicuously silent when they step into the curry house, which means he’s gazing at the menu and salivating too much to speak. Roy has been patronizing this place for years, on and off as deployments changed, and lately the owner has a bad habit of sneaking Hitomi scraps of chicken after ringing him up.

“You want your usual?” Ed asks.

“I want calories,” Roy says. “Not picky about the trappings tonight.”

“My favorite customers!” Karl says. A hinge squeaks—part of the front counter folds back to allow access to the waiting area—and the man approaches. “Who’s a good dog? Who’s a _hungry_ dog?”

Hitomi instantly transitions from a serious, professional working animal to a slavering, affectionate puppy. In all honesty, Roy should probably discourage that kind of behavior, but the whole routine is far too amusing to interrupt.

In a matter of minutes, they’re heading back out—Hitomi somewhat reluctantly, Roy thinks. Ed has the paper bag in hand, but even so the smell is driving Roy insane.

“You know something?” Ed asks after a few moments of uncharacteristic silence.

“Several things, I hope,” Roy says.

“Dick. I meant… just… I mean, if you wanted to, you could always—live with me and Al.”

Roy instinctively turns towards him, fumbling for words.

“I mean,” Ed says hastily, “it’s sort of a crazy idea, and our place is really small and stuff, and I don’t know if Hitomi would get along with the furballs, and—but just—if you ever—wanted to. If you ever get tired of being by yourself in that giant house.”

Roy clears his throat, trying to work his voice, and realizes he’s not sure what to have it say.

And then Hitomi growls deeply in a way he doesn’t like, and there’s a flutter and a rush of air as Edward turns—and Ed shouts, and something extraordinarily heavy collides with Roy’s shoulder and slams him to the ground.

Roy adds another mark to the uncountable tally of times that Riza Hawkeye has directly or indirectly saved his life. Most adjutants probably would have surrendered to the moping and let a blind man give up combat for good. Roy’s told him outright that he’d be shit at aiming flames from now on, and he’d better learn some hand-to-hand.

The brawny thug attempting to pin Roy to the pavement seems extremely surprised to have his nose broken by a blind man’s elbow. There’s a splash of wetness against the side of Roy’s neck, and the man’s arms unwind from around his chest; over the ear-splitting howl, he hears Hitomi snarl. There’s a scraping sound, a cry, a heavy thud, and a “That’s right, fucker!” from Edward as Roy scrambles to his feet, holding his arms out uncertainly. His head is spinning from the hunger, the adrenaline, and the fall; the nearby buildings make the sounds echo strangely, and there’s too much noise to differentia—

“ _Holy shit_!”

Roy recognizes the edge on the unfamiliar voice—that is a man in agonizing pain. Judging by the sustained growl rumbling from Hitomi, who seems to be in about the same place—

“No you fucking _don’t_!” That’s Ed’s voice, and then there’s another heavy impact of flesh, and scrabbling, and then a gunshot—

He’s stranded. He’s straining as hard as he can, but there isn’t a speck of light to go by. There is nothing but his ringing ears, his galloping heart, and this endless darkness between him and the truth. He can’t hear the struggle, if there is one—if the bullet fired awry, missed Ed, missed Hitomi, spiraled aimlessly into the sky. He can’t find the walls of the buildings—can’t anchor himself, can’t close off even one angle of attack. There’s nothing but the deep, even black. He’s stranded, and he’s so fucking _alone_.

A hand lands on his shoulder, larger than Ed’s and much more forceful—he swings from the hips, and his curled fist connects with what feels like a jaw. The flesh gives satisfyingly, but he can’t hear the _crack_ ; the man’s weight disappears, and the world is empty again. He doesn’t even know how many assailants there are.

Sounds start to filter back in—he drinks them like a nectar. That scraping belongs to Ed’s boots, doesn’t it? And the skittering is Hitomi’s paws?

“ _Fuck_!” That’s Ed, breathless, winded, hurt—

There’s a ghostly brush against his knee, and he recoils, but then it’s on the other side—it takes him another second to realize it’s Hitomi, circling him, trying to protect him from—

Something clatters to the asphalt, and bone or tendon snaps, and Ed screams—

“ _Down_!” Roy shouts. Hitomi knows the command, and he’ll just have to pray that Ed can guess—pray to anyone who’s listening; maybe they can hear him better in the dark, and in any case he’s already pulled the pin and thrown.

He slaps his hands over his ears, but he looks directly into the light as the flashbang explodes into white.

For one moment, all the shapes and silhouettes are clear—the knife on the ground; the handgun further off; one man stumbling and clutching at his jaw; a second twisting Ed’s right arm behind his back. And perhaps the prayers worked, because Edward ducked his head in time, and now he seizes the moment of surprise to bring his left heel up directly into his captor’s groin.

The world drops back into oblivion, and there isn’t time to think. The attackers will be able to see again in a matter of heartbeats, but Roy remembers—he remembers, and he dives for the gun.

His right hand is still half-numb from the blow he dealt, but he can feel the asphalt tearing at his skin. He’ll regret this later; he needs those fingertips intact; he needs them as much as his ears. He can’t have been wrong—can’t—he remembers—he knows—he must be close, must be inches off, another sweep—

Cold metal, and his knuckles sting, but his knees hold, and he points the pistol just past the origin of Ed’s ragged breath. Hitomi snarls again, low in her throat, and the sound resonates.

“Fuck,” somebody gasps. Ed hisses through his teeth as he retreats towards Roy’s right side, and by the other stumbling footsteps, both of their assailants are still in front of him.

And then they run.

Roy’s hands are shaking so violently that he might have missed them anyway. When he can barely hear the echoes, he lowers the gun and runs his thumb over the back of the barrel in search of the safety. He pushes it back into place, and then he swallows and turns towards Ed.

“A—” His throat sticks; he tries again. “Are y—”

“Fine,” Ed says flatly. “The piece of shit dislocated my shoulder, but he punches like a four-year-old. Hitomi’s fine. Everybody’s fine, except for the wall we shot. I’m going to get my knife; don’t point that thing at me.”

Roy’s not sure he’d have the strength to raise the gun.

 

 

A utensil clatters to the floor as they step back through the curry house’s door.

“May I use your telephone?” Roy asks.

 

 

“ _Dumbasses_ ” is all that Knox says when his door creaks open to reveal a square of pale light. Roy thinks that, for once, it’s undeserved, but he holds his tongue. The nicer they are now, the nicer Knox will be while realigning Ed’s shoulder and bandaging Roy’s hands.

 

 

Knox complains about having to drive them back, but the fact that he won’t let them call another taxi belies all of the bitching.

Roy turns the foyer light on first thing this time. He doesn’t like it when Ed’s quiet like this. He can’t tell if it’s anger; and if it is, he can’t tell at whom.

They stand there for the better part of a minute. Hitomi lies down on the floor.

“I’m so fucking hungry,” Ed says. “I don’t care if the curry’s cold. And smashed. And whatever. I’ll get you a fork.”

Roy’s waiting for an explosion. For the first time in a long time, he’s scared to provoke it, and he isn’t sure why. It just feels like there’s too much at stake somehow—like there’s something to lose, something nebulous that he can’t live without.

On second thought, he’s knows exactly why, and that’s worse.

They eat cold curry more or less in silence. Hitomi’s nerves haven’t settled either; her nails click on the hardwood, back and forth, around the table, into the entryway, back to Roy’s chair.

When they’re finished, he walks Ed to the door, and the air is stifling as they hesitate.

“What would have happened,” Ed says, “if I hadn’t been there?”

“I would have given them my money,” Roy says.

“What if that wasn’t what they wanted?”

The exhaustion hits Roy like a fucking freight train, and it’s a small miracle that he stays on his feet. “What do you want me to say, Edward?”

The silence throbs.

“I don’t know,” Ed says—bitterly, and so sharply that Roy almost steps back. “I don’t fucking know, okay?”

Roy takes a breath. He takes another. He curls his hands. “Okay.”

“Don’t you fucking die on me, Roy,” Ed says, and his voice is shaking now. “Everybody fucking dies on me, and I’m not fucking losing you, do you understand?”

_Ask me to promise anything but that, and it’s yours. It’s all yours._

“Goodnight, Ed,” he says.

“Fuck you, Mustang,” Ed says thickly, and the door slams.


	5. Insights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Team Mustang: NEVER CHANGE.

“Day-drinking, sir?” Riza asks mildly.

Roy sighs, swiveling his chair to face her. “Don’t judge me.”

“What did you do to your hands?” Beneath _I can’t leave you alone for five minutes_ , there’s a tone of genuine concern.

He turns the chair again, opens the top-right drawer, takes up the pistol with his handkerchief, and holds it out to her. “Can you get this fingerprinted and trace the license, if there is one?”

There’s silence for a moment, and then Riza strides forward and takes the gun. “Was Edward with you?”

“He’s all right,” Roy says. “Although I’m not sure he’s speaking to me anymore.”

“What happened?”

Roy smiles, or tries to. “What always happens?”

There is a shift of fabric and a few more swift strides, and then Riza is hugging him tightly.

“Do you want me to talk to him?” she asks as she steps back.

“Truthfully,” Roy says, “I’m not sure yet. I think I’ll need to assess the damage first.” He takes a deep breath. “So how is the new pen working for you?”

“The little pewter skull at the end of the cap is an artful touch,” Riza says. She pauses. “Have you slept, sir?”

Between Ishval and Ed… “Not much.”

“One sugar or two in your coffee?”

“Three,” Roy says. “I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

 

 

“Second Lieutenant Breda,” Riza says, “Hitomi is better-trained than most graduates from the military academy, and that cabinet is not designed to support your weight.”

“Yeah,” Breda says, “but this cabinet doesn’t want to rip my throat out. I’m more comfortable here, honest.”

“Sergeant Fuery, please do not feed Colonel Mustang’s canine assistant while she’s working.”

“But she’s always working,” Fuery says. “And she’s _begging_.”

“I don’t believe it qualifies as ‘begging’ by the dictionary definition unless her paws are involved,” Falman says. “As of yet, I think this is merely puppy eyes.”

The door bursts open. “Becky and I just got this crate of _amazing_ Aerugan whiskey, and you guys have to tr… uh, hello, Lieutenant. Colonel. Colonel’s attack dog.”

“ _See_?” Breda wails.

“Second Lieutenant Falman,” Roy says, “with me. We can review this in a conference r—”

His desk phone rings.

He pinches the bridge of his nose. The scrapes on his fingertips have scabbed over a little since last night, but he doesn’t fancy exacerbating them.

“Hitomi, come.” One hand on the arm of the chair and one on the tabletop gets him to his feet, and he crosses over to the telephone and lifts the receiver. “Mustang.”

Distressingly, chirpy young female secretaries have started to sound grating to his ears. “I have an Alphonse Elric calling for you, sir?”

“Put him through,” Roy says. “Thank you.”

The line buzzes briefly, and then it clicks. “Colonel?”

“What can I do for you, Alphonse?”

“I was hoping you could explain why Brother spent the entire morning curled up on the couch hugging one of the cats.”

“…ah. Is he there now?”

“I sent him out for groceries. For the record, Colonel, if you’re the one who gave him the bruise on his jaw—”

Roy’s stomach drops like an unmoored elevator. “I would _never_!”

“I doubted it, but I thought I’d check.”

“Look, we—” Shit. “Hold on a second.”

He feels for the desktop, gently lays the receiver down, and moves back across his office to shut the inner doors. He chooses to ignore the way Havoc says “ _Well_ , now.”

Sighing inwardly, he picks up again. “Still there?”

“And twice as intrigued.”

“We were assaulted in the street last night. They dislocated your brother’s shoulder, but I took him to Knox. He was—shaken—and I didn’t want to comfort him with lies, and he got angry with me. That’s all there is to tell.”

Al is silent for a long moment. “I think I understand. Do you?”

“I have no idea what you’re saying, so I believe it’s safe to say that I don’t.”

“It’s impolite to be sarcastic when someone is coming to your rescue,” Alphonse says. “Think about it. Brother has spent his entire life trying to protect people—me, particularly, but to a lesser extent virtually everyone around him. He’s accustomed to being one of the most powerful people in the room, and he never utilized that in an arrogant way, but it helped him to feel that he was capable of defending others when they needed help.” There is a pause. “And… you were the person who protected _him_. You were like him, one step higher up, and he could rely on you to look after everybody he cared about. He wasn’t doing it alone anymore.”

Roy massages at the headache mounting in his sinuses. “And now we’re shadows of what we were.”

“The intent remains,” Alphonse says, “as does the fear. I think the single scariest thing Brother can imagine is another disaster taking place now, when he just can’t be the vanguard that he was.”

Roy leans against the desk. Are there people out there who have ordinary lives? Are there people who haven’t felt the weight of the world—haven’t looked death in the eyes and mustered a smile? Are there people who don’t have to wonder whether the exhaustion or the existential crises will kill them first? “Last night he had to come to terms with his own powerlessness.”

“And with the fact of yours.”

“It’s impolite to remind a military officer of his disability.”

“Please don’t be a prick, Colonel.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Roy asks. “I’m not about to insult his intelligence telling him everything’s going to be all right. It’s not, and he knows that. He has to reconcile with it and move on with his life.”

Al sighs. “Do you have any idea how important you are?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Ed hangs all of his hopes on you, Colonel. I keep telling him not to bet the farm on a single horse, but he has a tendency to miss the point and call me a yokel. You are the personification of the future to Ed—the future of the country, the future of the world he lives in. And he has invested in you emotionally with the kind of wholehearted faith that he always does. You’re it, Colonel. He’s all in. If you fail, he has nothing left.”

Roy rubs harder at his forehead. “So no pressure.”

“I told you not to be a prick.” His voice softens. “Are you hearing me, though?”

Roy fidgets with the telephone cord. “Yes. But I still don’t know what you want me to _do_ about it.”

“Love him,” Alphonse says. “Half as much as he loves you.”

Roy never should have picked up the phone.

“Just—drop by the apartment later,” Al says. “Tell him that you’re there for him and bring him flowers or something. No, bring food; that makes a much bigger impact on Ed.”

“Alphonse, I can’t promi—”

“You can. And if you care about him, you will.”

He hangs up the phone, buries his face in both hands, takes a few deep breaths, and heads out into the larger office again. It’s a pity he can’t glare around the room.

“More coffee, sir?” Riza asks.

“A gallon, if you’re feeling kind.”

“Shall I dose it with some of Lieutenant Havoc’s whiskey, sir?”

“That would be very kind indeed.”

 

 

Roy hesitates before knocking, just in case Edward whips the door open again. When there’s no evident rush of air, he applies his knuckles, somewhat gingerly in accordance with the state of his hands today.

He can faintly hear the boys within—“No, I’ve got it, Al. No, sit down. If you hit me with that cane, so help me—”

The door opens. There’s a pause.

“Evening,” Roy says. He picks up the takeout bag in his left hand and holds it out. “I brought food.” He raises his right hand. “And dead plants.”

“O…kay,” Ed says. He goes for the takeout first. “Al, do your giant furry paperweights eat flowers?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Al says.

Ed mutters under his breath and snatches the flowers out of Roy’s hand. “Watch your step on… _figuratively_ watch your step on the threshold. Al, are your stupid cat-crap machines going to piss off the dog?”

“Just because the cats are your size does not make it okay to pick on them.”

“Can it, or I’ll hide your cane. Come on in, Colonel. Al, do we even _have_ a vase?”

“We have that seven-hundred-milliliter beaker. Is that honeysuckle?”

The boys must keep the place warm; Roy’s face is heating up. “Ah… that was what I requested, although it was difficult to verify.”

“Could you have picked something with a _more_ suggestive name?” Ed asks.

“I’ll try harder next time,” Roy says. He reaches for the door, listens to the panting to double-check that Hitomi is out of the way, and pushes it shut.

“Fuck,” Ed says. “Al—” Tissue paper rustles as the flowers change hands. “This place is a minefield of textbooks, Colonel. Here—”

Ed’s hand grazes Roy’s elbow, and Roy can’t help flinching. Shit; if Ed thinks Roy doesn’t trust him _now_ — “Sorry. Long day.”

“You and me both.” Ed shepherds him forward, and Roy’s boot nudges an obstacle that is either a book or a cat only once. “Chair on your left, kinda low. So what are we eating?”

“You’re eating falafel,” Roy says. “I am not eating, because I have consumed enough coffee spiked with whiskey that I’m positive I’d vomit if I added food.”

Ed snorts. “You need to take way better fucking care of yourself if you want to run the country one of these days. That said, I’ll give you ten thousand cens if you take your oath of office totally shitfaced.”

“You don’t have ten thousand cens,” Al says, “and that’s probably illegal.”

“I like to imagine I’ll have enough influence to bend the rules by then,” Roy says, and some part of him senses that Ed is looking at him—wondering.

 

 

Havoc’s car is idling on the street, and Roy and Ed are on opposite sides of the treacherous threshold.

“There’s one more thing,” Roy says.

“There usually is with you,” Ed says.

“Führer Grumman is hosting a diplomatic banquet Saturday night,” Roy says. “I’m encouraged to bring a guest. Would you like to go?”

“Yes, he would!” Al calls.

“Get your own social life!” Ed shouts back.

“How am I supposed to do that when you won’t let me go outside unattended until I can, and I quote, ‘bench-press medium-sized children with my legs’?”

“It’s for your own good, and you know it.”

“He’s going with you, Colonel.”

Roy clears his throat. “Edward?”

“Fine, whatever,” Ed says. “Anything that gets me away from my _evil brother_ is cool with me.”

“I’ll dress him,” Alphonse says. “Undressing him will be your job.”

Roy and Ed sputter in perfect unison, and then Ed cries “ _Goodnight_!” and slams the door.

Hitomi huffs her indignation at their sudden sendoff, but Roy is grinning all the way back to the car.

 

 

Roy’s desk chair is murder on his back when he slouches. On the other hand, if he shows himself, he risks more literal homicide.

“I don’t like this one,” Breda says.

“I don’t like your face,” Ed says. “What’s wrong with it?”

Roy considers throwing himself out the window. Are the hedges at the bottom still there? He might survive the fall if he landed on some hedges.

“It just doesn’t feel right,” Breda says.

“That is the least scientific assessment I have ever heard,” Ed says. “I was going to apologize for the face thing, but now I think it was fair.”

Would Hitomi jump out after him? He can’t risk that.

“Damn, you turned into a little _bastard_ when you quit—”

“ _Little_? So little I saved all of your asses by punching a fake god in the face with my _little_ fist? So little I beat the closest thing there is to a real god at his own game with my _little_ brain and my _little_ ba—”

Breda raises his voice. “It’s weighted poorly, and it doesn’t balance very well when the writing surface isn’t flat.”

Silence, blessed but brief.

“Oh,” Ed says. “Okay. Let me see. Lieutenant, can we borrow your clipbo—thanks. _Oh_. Okay, yeah. I don’t want the ink to pour out the back, either; does this one leak if you hold it upside-down?”

Roy kicks off the edge of the desk to send his chair into a swift spin.

“Can I get you something, sir?” Riza asks.

“Is there coffee?”

“Sergeant Fuery is in the breakroom making more.”

“You should quit that shit,” Ed says. “If you replace your blood with coffee, you _will_ have a heart attack. It’s scientific fact.”

“I’m afraid it’s not,” Falman cuts in. “And it would require something like eighty cups of coffee in a single day to cause a caffeine overdose.”

“Thank you, Second Lieutenant,” Roy says. He swivels his chair in Ed’s direction. “You drink coffee all the time. _Bad_ coffee, no less.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, “but I’m not as important as you are. Okay, dude, if you _shake_ it, of course it’s going to sprout a fucking leak.”

“Do I get a bonus for product-testing?” Breda asks.

“You’re going to get my foot in your ass if you break any more of these.”

“He’s so cute when he’s angry,” Breda says. “Isn’t he, Colonel?”

“Where is that goddamn coffee?” Roy asks.

 

 

Saturday evening is briskly cool despite the dress uniform by the time Roy knocks at the Elrics’. The door opens almost immediately.

“Yo,” Ed says. “Let me throw some shoes on.”

“What are you wearing?” Roy asks.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ed says. “Keep it in your pants at _least_ until we get to the party.”

“It’s not a party,” Roy says. “And I’m not being lascivious.” Although of course he’s thinking that way now that Edward _mentioned_ it. “What colors do you have on?”

“Black and white,” Ed says, “and the vest is green. Wh—”

Roy opens the tiny cardboard box the florist gave him and, presuming that he has not been duped, offers Ed a white flower with vibrant yellow spreading outward from the center. “For your lapel.”

He can hear Ed fidgeting. “I—th-thanks. That’s cool. For a dead plant, y’know.”

“It’s called a frangipani,” Roy says.

“That’s even cooler.”

“Give me your hand,” Roy says. Edward does, with minimal mumbling. Roy deposits the box in it and runs his right hand lightly downward from Ed’s shoulder, searching for the buttonhole. He’s threaded enough flowers through enough loops over the years that this isn’t too difficult even without the aid of sight—and then it’s an excellent excuse to smooth both palms more slowly down Ed’s chest. Under the silk of the vest, the firm, warm definition of Ed’s chest is downright tantalizing. “How’s that?”

“Provocative,” Ed says, squirming a little. “Is Havoc watching? Fuck. You know he’s going to give me shit about it later. And I meant to ask—should I take my hair down? Or—”

“Edward,” Roy says, “the greatest tragedy of blindness is not being able to see you, because you always look staggering.”

Ed’s breath quickens. “You’re the biggest flatterer I’ve ever met. That’s probably going to take you a long way in government. Hey, Al, I’m leaving!”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Alphonse calls back. “Or anyone!”

“Bitch!” Ed shouts.

“Jerk!”

Ed shuts the door. “Let’s get this the fuck over with.”

“As you like,” Roy says.

 

 

Talking politics sets Roy on edge these days—it’s so much more difficult to read broadly, and therein so much more difficult to keep abreast of news, that he feels ignorant and disconnected. He’s dreading having to discuss the finer points of international relations with important emissaries whose faces he can’t assess, all the while racking his brain for policy details and demographic trends.

But if he can do that—if he can suffer through without embarrassing himself too egregiously—Edward Elric is his reward. Roy can’t think of a better incentive to make it through dinner followed by an appropriate interval of mingling.

For the obligatory meal, Ed is seated beside him, and Hitomi squeezes in between their chairs and settles down, trying to stay out of the way of the servers.

“So,” Ed mutters, “am I just arm candy, or do I have to pretend to be civil and shit?”

“Just relax,” Roy says. “Anyone who knows who you are knows that you’re not a politician, and anyone who doesn’t know you won’t expect you to converse with them in the first place.”

“You’re nervous,” Ed says. “That makes me nervous.”

“I’m not nervous,” Roy says. “I’m concerned that I’ll make a fool of myself.”

“It’s not raining; you’ll be fine.”

“That’s terribly funny.”

“I’m glad we’re in agreement.”

“I’m going to tell all of the ambassadors to ask you for your well-researched opinion on every issue they broach.”

“No, you’re not,” Ed says. “That’d make you look bad.”

Roy smirks. Damn, that feels good. “On the contrary, rescuing my date from a quagmire of incoherence would make me look dashing.”

“Arm candy it is, then,” Ed says. “Oh, look, wine. I’ll just keep drinking until this is fun.”

Perhaps this was not Roy’s finest plan.

“Why do I have so many utensils?” Ed asks. “Is it for protection? Like, if somebody’s a traitorous spy, I’ve got seven spare forks to throw in the hopes of ganking them in the neck?”

Definitely not Roy’s finest plan.

 

 

“Find Edward,” Roy murmurs to Hitomi when he’s had enough champagne-glass-cradling and loaded conversation. By the rather complicated system of reckoning that he’s designed over the years, he’s finally put in sufficient time chatting about absurdly rosy future prospects and couching tactful comments about divisive issues.

Hitomi leads him directly across the room. To the bar.

“Stop drinking,” Roy says.

The air shifts as Ed darts away, and Roy would give just about anything to see him moving with that dancer’s grace. “But it’s free.”

Roy feels very fortunate that no important diplomatic personages seem to be close enough to overhear this exchange. “That is not a justifiable reason to get wasted.”

“I’m not wasted,” Ed says. “I am very conservated. Conservational. Conservative.”

“Don’t say that in front of any politicians, all right?”

“Are you not conservationalative?” Ed asks. He gulps down whatever he’s imbibing at a remarkable speed. “Politically, I’m… whatever you are.”

“You shouldn’t think about it like that,” Roy says. “You should evaluate the opposing platforms and decide on your standpoint based on whose policies correlate most closely to your opini—”

“I don’t care,” Ed says. “I’ve evaluated you. And I trust you. So I’m pro-Mustang and anti-anybody else.”

Roy wishes he could blame the warmth in his chest on the wine. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, but—”

“But nothing,” Ed says. “Drink and be merry. Isn’t that why we’re here?”

“Not even close,” Roy says.

“Hey,” Ed says. “I saw Lieutenant Hawkeye earlier. And she was with Second Lieutenant Ross. I didn’t realize they were… y’know.”

“It is my understanding that they have been _y’know_ for some time now,” Roy says.

Edward is silent for a moment. Someone off to Roy’s right gives a jarringly unconvincing laugh.

“Roy,” Ed says, “are we… y’know?”

“That depends,” Roy says.

“On what?”

“On your definition of ‘y’know.’” If nothing else, Edward has already ensured that this is the single most surreal diplomatic function Roy has ever attended.

“Hey,” Ed says. “You know that Drachman guy you were talking to a little while ago?”

“I was talking to several Drachman gentlemen; can you be more specific?”

“He looked like a sleazebag.”

“I am a poor judge of outward sleazebaggery these days.”

“He also looked like a ferret.”

“That’s impressive multitasking.”

“Shut up. I was _going_ to warn you that he’s wearing a hilariously stupid hat.”

Every now and again, an occasion surfaces which _almost_ gives Roy cause to celebrate his immunity to visual distractions. “I appreciate your caution, but I don’t expect that his choice of headwear has an overwhelming effect on his consideration of our treaty terms.”

“You don’t understand,” Ed says. “You can’t make deals with some guy who can’t even dress himself.”

“Arguably,” Roy says, “ _you_ can’t dress yourself.”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “But I’m cute.”

Roy hasn’t had much wine, but his head feels light, and his heart feels like it’s stumbling. He’s drunk on _Ed_. “That you are.”

He can almost see the reckless, sharp-toothed grin. “You think so?”

“Edward,” Roy says, “I suggest we step outside.”

“Something I said?”

“Several things,” Roy says. “I think it might be for the best if you physically distance yourself from the supply of alcohol and get some air.”

“Are you coming?”

“I wouldn’t leave you alone in a state like this,” Roy says.

Hitomi dutifully follows Ed across the ballroom and out onto some sort of terrace or patio with stone tiles. There’s a malicious chill in the air now, and Edward’s steps tap out a slightly unsteady rhythm. The noise of the party has subsided somewhat—enough, strangely, that the whole affair seems distant, as though it already belongs to another person leading an entirely different life. Roy Mustang exists on these stones, in this cold night, with this warm and wonderful and alarmingly inebriated boy.

“Alphonse is going to murder me tomorrow for letting you get so drunk,” he says.

Ed snorts. “It’s not your fault; you were working or whatever. Plus you can just take me home with you, and then I’ll be hungover at your place in the morning, and he won’t even have to know.”

Roy can think of a thousand reasons to follow through and a thousand reasons it’s far too dangerous. “Let’s see how you feel by the end of the night, shall we?”

“How much longer do we have to stay?” Ed asks. “I’m _bored_. I mean, I’m glad you invited me, ’cause it was nice of you, and the food was really good, but I’m just staying out of the way so that I don’t fuck anything up, and it’s _boring_.”

Roy swallows hard. “Do you want to dance?”

Ed yawns. Roy imagines the cavernous mouth that this gesture entails for Edward Elric. Then he imagines the bleary blinking and the kittenish tongue, and his knees almost fail him. “Dunno how.”

“Would you like me to teach you?”

“Dunno,” Ed says again, sounding as though he suspects foul play. “That’s probably a bad idea. I mean, dancing is kind of… intimate, isn’t it?”

“I suppose,” Roy says.

“People might see us.”

“I suppose.”

“That could fuck things up, after all of my hard work not fucking up and stuff.”

“I suppose it could. Would… you like me to show you where to start, and then we can decide whether we think it’s worth the risk?”

“You’re so fucking calculated,” Ed says, taking one step closer, then two. “All the time, you’re playing these games in your head. Can’t you just turn that off and _live_ once in a while?”

“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Roy says. He reaches out, and his fingers brush Ed’s chest. One limb at a time, he positions them both—Roy with Ed’s right hand in his left, their arms around each other’s waists. Ed’s body radiates heat, and it’s heavy against his. It oozes energy, and he just wants to bask in the fervor.

“No,” Ed says. “This is way too obvious.”

Roy starts to release him, but Ed fists a hand in the back of his coat.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Ed buries his face in Roy’s shirtfront, and it’s all Roy can do to keep breathing; a response is out of the question. “We each had a goal, right? And then the whole fucking giant transmutation circle conspiracy of doom thing fucked up both of our plans for a while, because it was more urgent. Except that then it ended up helping me reach my goal. Al’s back. He’s going to be okay. But _you_ —you’re still fighting. You don’t get to kick back and rest on your laurels and whatever. You’ve still got a target. You helped me more than I can even describe when I was aiming for mine, and I’m going to do the same thing for you, Roy fucking Mustang. I’m going to watch you get up there on a podium with the flag on it, and I’m going to be screaming louder than anybody in the crowd. But that means I can’t do anything to jeopardize that goal, okay? Not _anything_. Even if I want to. Even when I want to so bad it’s like a fever.” He clings a little closer. “So—we can’t right now. Can’t be obvious. Can’t be… _y’know_ … like most people. But—for a minute—will you just—hold me? And—I’ll pretend like we can.”

Rarely has Roy held anyone so tightly.

Moments slip between his fingers and fall away. Edward’s hair is softer even than he’d imagined, little wisps of it tickling at his cheek, and it smells vaguely floral; he probably steals Alphonse’s shampoo. With Ed’s warm body nestled into his chest, with his eyes closed, with the sounds of the banquet and the world fading around them to a pleasant background hum, Roy can almost believe that things are simple.

“Sir,” Riza’s voice says softly.

He lets go and turns towards her.

“We lifted a partial print from the handgun,” she says. “The man who left it has a previous record. The gun is registered to a false name that we’ve traced back to one of the old guard.”

So much for the momentary peace.

“Wait, what?” Ed says.

“One of Bradley’s allies wants me dead,” Roy says.

Ed lurches against Roy’s arm and latches onto it for balance. “Oh. Is that all?”


	6. An Eye for an Eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ed, why.

Roy is uncharacteristically quiet as they get into the car.

Havoc, however, is characteristically un-quiet.

“You have a good time, Boss?”

Ed’s head is swimming. Through molasses. Half-frozen, slushy molasses with gelatin underneath.

“Free booze,” he says.

The engine sounds _very_ loud. “Looks like you had fun with that.”

“’S better than your drain-cleaner shit.”

Havoc takes a corner _way_ too fast, and Ed tips right the fuck over. Fortunately, Roy’s lap is available to break his fall.

Maybe it’s not Havoc’s fault. Maybe the world is just moving at a devastating clip. Maybe everything’s a little bit unstable, and Ed should consider himself lucky that he found somewhere to land.

Roy startles at the intrusion, and Hitomi looks up from where she’s been curled on the floor. Her ears flick back and forth, and then she decides that Ed’s sloshedness is not a threat and lays her head down on her paws again.

“Looks like you had a little _too_ much fun with that.”

“You’re jealous,” Ed says, and he shifts—which is not easy with his seatbelt still fastened—to settle his cheek more comfortably on Roy’s thigh.

“Am I dropping him off at his place or yours, sir?”

Ed wishes he could find sufficient motivation to raise his head, but this is _cozy_. So he can’t. “Don’t talk like I’m not here!”

“We’re not,” Roy says, and then—and then he’s stroking Ed’s hair, and—and that’s—just about—probably the nicest thing Ed’s ever felt. “You’re not in much of a position to make executive decisions at the moment, that’s all. My house, Lieutenant.”

“Say no more, Colonel.”

Roy cards his fingers through the tangles in Ed’s ponytail. “I’ll thank you not to make any untoward insinuations.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

With Roy’s fingers tugging gently at his hair, Ed understands why cats love Al. And why he…

Shitfuckitycrapdamn.

On the upside, Roy has a really soothing voice. Velvety. “I’ll also thank you not to raise your eyebrows, which I _know_ you are.”

“My forehead itches, and I don’t want to take my hands off the wheel.”

“Your conscientious driving is an inspiration.”

“Gotta warn you, if the boss starts purring, I’m probably going to crash into a lamppost.”

“Not a cat,” Ed mutters. “ _Will_ bite you.”

“The colonel has dibs, kid.”

“There goes your tip, Lieutenant,” Roy says.

 

 

Ed wakes up slowly and in agony. His head is full of rocks and acid, and his stomach has been turned inside-out on a cell-by-cell basis; all of his blood has metamorphosed into sludge, and his tongue feels like a scrap of carpet, and just for kicks his shoulder still aches.

Pertinently, where the fuck is he?

Lifting his head makes it pirouette, but when the colors stop blurring, shit comes into focus. Namely, Roy comes into focus. Roy has his back to Ed, and the comforter is pulled all the way up to his neck, so Ed can’t tell if he’s clothed or not.

If they got it on and Ed _doesn’t even remember_ , he’s going to be _so_ fucking pissed.

Ed cranes his neck past the pillow-cuddling colonel and his gorgeous fucking morning hair. Hitomi’s lying on the floor; when she hears the bed creak, she sits up and pricks her ears. He waves, and she stares back blankly. Holy fuck, even the _dog_ is judging him.

Bonus: his eyes feel like they’re coated in powdered glass. He scrubs at them and looks down at himself. He’s got his shirt and his boxers on, so that’s probably a _no_ on the _riotous sex_. Interestingly, it’s a _yes_ on the _being undressed while semi-conscious_.

He squints until he can read the round-faced clock on Roy’s nightstand, which is ticking far too loud. Apparently it’s a minute to eight. Also apparent is the fact that Roy kept the frangipani from Ed’s lapel, since it’s sitting in a little cup of water next to the clock.

The clock in question then proceeds to ring so loudly that Ed’s whole head echoes, and he slams his hands over his ears. _Not fair_.

By the time he’s emerged from the fetal position and cracked his eyes open, Roy is sitting up on the opposite side of the bed, displaying an extremely posh-looking pair of pajamas in pale green silk, and the infernal ringing has stopped.

“Good morning,” Roy says.

Ed clenches his teeth. “You’re fucking hilarious, you know that?”

“I’ve been told,” Roy says.

Ed looks at him—really looks. He always feels kind of guilty even for thinking it, but he secretly likes the way he can look at Roy all he wants now, and he’ll never get caught staring.

And then there’s the fact that it doesn’t matter if he gets called out or not—it _kills_ him when he does it, because when he looks long enough, he sees the changes. Roy is even more guarded and controlled in front of military associates and strangers now, like he’s prepared to be betrayed, like he’s expecting a knife in the back, like they’d all take advantage of him the instant his armor failed. And maybe it’s in reaction to that—maybe he’s just exhausted from holding up those stone walls day in and day out—but when he’s with people he trusts, he’s small, and sad, and vulnerable. Ed can’t stop thinking of that time in the park, when he said he’s always lost. When Roy’s alone, he looks it.

It hurts like a hemorrhaging in Ed’s chest to think that he’s part of the tiny inner circle privy to this Roy. It scares the fuck out of him to think that he might not deserve the privilege.

He clears his throat, which feels shitty. “What happened last night?”

Roy smiles faintly and slides off of the edge of the bed. He pads across the room in his slippers and starts to part the curtains, only to stop abruptly as Ed howls and flings an arm over his eyes.

“Last night you drank your own body weight in champagne,” Roy says. Ed dares to peek. Roy is standing at the window, and the thin line of light from between the curtains illuminates the right side of his face. He’s a little bit flushed and a lot disheveled, and a crease in the pillow made an imprint on his cheek. He looks so drastically different when he’s not _Colonel_ Mustang—when he’s not in the uniform, with its reinforced shoulders and its flashy accoutrements, with all of that extra material making him seem so _big_. He’s narrower now, and more defined, and softer somehow. “Is it bright enough for you to see? I was going to take a shower. The lieutenant is coming at nine to talk about our options with the assault case.”

Ed vaguely remembers some extremely solemn discussion of fingerprints and criminal records. He also remembers violent nausea, a ridiculously pushy Cretan chick who wanted to jump his bones, chocolate-covered strawberries that tasted like orgasm, Roy petting his hair, and a hug that felt indescribably safe. He has no idea what order those events were originally in.

“Okay,” he says. “Let me take a piss before you turn the bathroom into a sauna.”

Roy smiles thinly. “The model of decorum, as always. Go on, then.”

Ed figures that even Roy can’t shower for _eternity_ , so he sits down to pet the dog while he waits. It still feels like most of his internal organs have been removed, wrung dry, and jammed back in the wrong way, and the throbbing in his head alone might kill a lesser man, but he’s survived more than a few hangovers since quitting the military, and his odds are good with this one. Damn if he isn’t exhausted, though. And damn if Hitomi’s fur doesn’t look like the softest thing this side of clouds.

He wakes up when Roy shakes his shoulder.

And then he _throws_ up.

 

 

Ed’s positive his face is still red when he lets Hawkeye in twenty minutes later. It didn’t help that Roy was so stupidly _nice_ about the whole thing—holding Ed’s hair, patting his back, telling him it was all right, the whole shebang. And now he keeps making Ed drink glass upon glass of water, but he hasn’t made a single joke involving a play on ‘upchuck’. Or on ‘spew’. Or ‘hurl’. Or—

“Can I offer you anything, Lieutenant?” Roy asks.

“No, thank you, sir,” Hawkeye says. “Can I offer you a copy of some police records?”

Ed helped Roy carve the illuminating array into a thin sheet of plywood earlier in the week; Roy lays the first piece of paper over it, spreads phosphorous, and starts to read. The light’s so bright that Ed’s stomach flips several times, and he looks studiously at the cabinets.

“Actually _related_ to General Edison?” Roy says. “That’s damning. I always said we shouldn’t let that snake write letters from prison.”

“You did,” Hawkeye says. “Often. Vociferously.”

Ed clears his throat loudly. “Why are we acting like this is normal?”

“It is normal,” Roy says. “At the very least, it’s logical, and it’s not unexpected.”

“There is nothing _logical_ about _assassins_ ,” Ed says. “Not in any country I want to fucking live in.”

Roy changes out the sheet over the array, rubs at his forehead, and pushes his wet hair back. “As you well know, I don’t have the power to change that yet.”

Every time Ed thinks he knows the bastard, there’s something like _this_ to contend with. “Why are you okay with this? Somebody tried to _kill you_. Know what happens when somebody kills you? You die. Knows what happens when you’re dead? You stop rising through the ranks.”

Roy’s mouth quirks. “Well, technically—”

“You lose your fucking chance to be Führer,” Ed says. “And you lose your fucking chance to make good. If you’re playing some kind of ass-backwards penance game with yourself, quit it. Been there; done that; it blows. Can we move on to putting this fucker away for life and feeling like we can walk down the street at night again?”

Roy leans back and stretches. His shirt shifts up enough to expose a sliver of skin, and every muscle in Ed’s body wobbles disconcertingly. “First we have to find him. They must not have expected you to be with me, or they would have brought more than one firearm.”

“Especially since you have two firehands,” Ed says.

Roy laughs brightly, and… it kind of helps.

“I’ll talk to Investigations,” Hawkeye says, smiling a bit. “I have a few favors I can call in.”

“It can wait until tomorrow,” Roy says.

Ed stares at him. He wishes Roy could see this one; stark disbelief is one of his strongest suits. “No, it _can’t_!”

Roy leans down to scratch under Hitomi’s chin. “You’re the one who’s always bitching that I work too hard.”

“I do not _bitch_. And the work you’re usually doing on weekends isn’t a matter of _life and death_.”

“It could be for someone,” Roy says.

“You are so fucking _obnoxious_ —”

“The verbal abuse I put up with is astounding.”

“You know what the problem with being a martyr is?” Ed says. “You have to _die_ first.”

“Edward has a point,” Hawkeye says. “Dying would be very ill-advised at this stage of your plan.”

Roy raises both hands in what appears to be surrender. “Ganging up on the disabled man,” he says. “I _see_ how it is.”

Hawkeye looks over at Ed. “That part is your fault,” she says.

 

 

Roy’s windows let in too much light. Roy’s orange juice is too thick. Roy’s phone rings too loud.

“Hello? Oh, good afternoon… Yes, he is.”

That’ll be Al.

“Lying on the couch pitying himself, at the moment. Would you like me to send him home?”

“I am entitled to some self-pity,” Ed says.

“Ah. In that case, I’ll have to find some menial labor for him or something.”

“I heard that!”

“I know you did. Pardon? Let me ask him—Edward, are you planning to have dinner here or with your brother tonight?”

Ed lays his forearm over his eyes in another futile attempt to block out all the light. “You say ‘planning’ like my head isn’t trying to explode.”

“He hasn’t decided. I’d be happy to feed him if you don’t have anyt— _oh, my God, Alphonse_.”

Ed sits up at that, and he’s slung an arm over the back of the couch before his stomach gets the memo and twists itself into a pretzel of _misery_.

He manages a noise something like “ _Gggkkkh_ ” and collapses to the couch again.

“I think he may be about to vomit again,” Roy says. “No, it’s—I’ll handle it. Thank you.” And then there is one rather large, very soft hand splayed on his chest and another stroking his hair back from his forehead.

“Don’t do that,” Ed says.

Roy hesitates. “Why not?”

 _Because I’m already too fucking in love with you._ “Just—no reason.”

“Then there’s no reason to stop.”

Ed rolls over and buries his face in the couch cushion. “What did Al say to freak you out like that?”

Roy pauses, and then he runs his hand gently down Ed’s back. It feels too damn good to writhe away from. “It was… I didn’t realize your brother had such an affinity for crude innuendo.”

“Huh?”

“I offered to feed you. He suggested a… part of my anatomy.”

Ed twists to stare at him—not that it matters. “ _Al_ told you to get me to blow you?”

Roy’s face goes scarlet. It’s fucking adorable. Ed needs a lobotomy. “Well—yes. Not in quite so many words, but—that was the gist.”

Shit. Ed’s going warm all over, and Roy’s going to feel it in a minute if he doesn’t move his hand. “I mean, I _would_ , except right now I’d probably puke on you, and that’d put you off sex forever.”

Roy’s eyes widen, and he draws his hand back in a hurry. “I… am going to get you some painkillers.”

“I’ll make sure to save some pain,” Ed says.

Roy stands, bracing himself on the arm of the couch, and then his footsteps head up the stairs. Hitomi raises her head to watch him go—apparently Roy’s allowed to navigate the house by himself sometimes. The floorboards creak just a little as he moves around, and Ed drags himself upright to wait. Hitomi licks at his trailing fingers a bit. In a minute Roy returns with a pill bottle in one hand, veering off into the kitchen to collect a glass of water in the other, and holds both out towards Ed.

“What would you say?” Ed asks. “If I offered to blow you, I mean. Right here, right now, no strings attached.”

Roy’s tongue darts out to wet his upper lip. “I’d say that there’s no such thing as ‘no strings attached’.”

“Whatever. If there was no commitment required.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“Answer the question,” Ed says.

Roy’s eyes narrow. “I would politely decline.”

Maybe when you’ve got well-honed blind-man’s hearing, the shock in any given silence is perfectly audible.

“I respect you more than that,” Roy says. “Until I can give you everything, I won’t ask you for more.”

He pushes the pill bottle at Ed. There are letters carved into the side to identify the contents. Ed takes it, and then he takes the water too.

“You can ask for shit,” he says. “I want you to ask for shit. That’s why I’m here.”

Roy smiles faintly. “Aren’t you tired of following my orders?” Before Ed can tell him where to shove _that_ fallacious association, his fingertips are grazing Ed’s jaw, and he’s leaning in to brush his lips over Ed’s forehead. “All I’m asking now is that you take the pills and get some rest.”

Ed can’t think of something to say that isn’t _You don’t understand; I need you to need me_ , so he doesn’t say anything.

 

 

As dinnertime rolls around, Roy makes soup from a can—in the bachelor-cuisine way, not the transmutational way—and serves them both without spilling a drop. Ed’s starving, and his stomach’s finally stable enough for food, so predictably he burns his mouth. When he’s shoveled it all down, Roy packs him up and sends him home in yesterday’s formal clothes. Ed considers asking to keep the frangipani and then decides to leave it. Maybe Roy will knock it over some morning and short-circuit his alarm clock, the stupid, dashing, un-telepathic _bastard_.

When he steps through the front door at his and Al’s place, Ed realizes that he probably should have thought twice about strolling into their apartment late in the evening after a night at Roy’s, wearing a wrinkled white dress shirt and looking like he didn’t get much sleep.

Al sets aside the thousandth university application form and looks him slowly up and down.

“I think we should set some ground rules,” Al says, folding his hands on the table. “No sex in my room. No sex in front of the cats, unless _you_ want to pay to send them to therapy. Any food items used for sex should be kept in a special part of the pantry and labeled.”

“Al,” Ed says. “ _No_.”

Al frowns at him cutely. “Please tell me that you’ve had the Talk.”

Ed stomps over to the cabinets; he’s dying of thirst again. “Of _course_ I have! Ling and Greed traded off paragraphs explaining things before they tore my pants off and demonstrated.”

He glances over, cheeks aflame, and sees that for once he’s actually left Al speechless. “Is—is that how—?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Whoop-de-fucking-do and stuff. Can we please not talk about my sex life ever again?”

“I certainly hope so,” Al says.

Ed pours himself a tall glass of lemonade and starts gulping.

“Was Ling any good?” Al asks.

Ed experiences incredible excruciation as a mouthful of lemonade sprays out his nose.

Al beams despite the fact that there is now snotty lemonade in his hair. “I’ll take that as a _yes_.”

 

 

“You have a _nice_ weekend, Boss?” Havoc asks, doing something unforgivable with his eyebrows.

“Don’t you have sin to peddle?” Ed fires back. “Some of us are here to work, you know.”

“I _am_ working,” Havoc says. “I’m being all subterfugey.”

“Not a word,” Falman says.

Havoc ignores that, presumably because Havoc has a tendency to dislike rational things like correct vocabulary and keeping his fat nose out of people’s personal lives. “This is the legit side of the subterfuge. I’m _liaising_.”

“No,” Fuery says. “You’re just lazing.”

Breda gives him a high-five, and Fuery looks decidedly smug.

Havoc scowls at the pair of them. “Just for that, _neither_ of you is getting any of the good stuff. It’s just you and me, Falman. Just the _real_ men, getting _really_ drunk at work.”

“Where the hell is Roy?” Ed asks. “I think I’ve got the typewriter ribbon figured out, but I can’t test it without a fucking typewriter.”

“ _Ribbon-testing_ , huh?” Havoc asks, smirking at him.

Breda winks. “Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?”

Ed makes a face. “Fuck both of you. If somebody doesn’t get me a goddamn typewriter, I’ll rat you all out to Lieutenant Hawkeye for slacking off.”

Fuery, who has spent most of this latest exchange sighing feelingly, crosses to one of the cabinets to fetch a machine.

“The colonel and the lieutenant are in a meeting,” Falman says helpfully. “So we’re not really ‘slacking off’ so much as… maximizing our Monday morning leisure time.”

“Bullshit,” Ed says. Fuery sets a serviceable typewriter on the table near him. “Thanks.”

“I don’t seem to recall you being the most dutifully obedient soldier the world had ever seen,” Havoc says, leaning back in his chair and folding his hands behind his head. “You know what they say about people in glass houses.”

“That they fucking suck at engineering?” Ed says. He holds the new spool out to Fuery. “Could you hold this for a second? Watch your fingers; it’s inky as hell.”

“Is hell inky?” Falman asks.

Ed manages to get the platen roll off without anything breaking, which is a decent start. “Honestly, it’s more conceptual than anything else.”

“So have you and Mustang done the dirty yet?” Breda asks.

Ed drops the platen.

On his left foot.

It breaks.

“He’s blushing!” Havoc says. “Damn, that’s the cutest thing I’ve seen all day. Except maybe the colonel falling asleep at his desk, and the dog licking his face to wake him up. That was pretty freakin’ cute.”

“Is that how you get his attention, too?” Breda asks.

“ _Fuck all of you_!” Ed shouts just as the door opens.

Sheska is standing in the doorway with a folder in her arms. “Should I… come back another time?”

“Hell, no!” Breda says. “We’re finally getting to the truth!”

Sheska waves the file folder hesitantly. “Um… do you still need this, then?”

Ed kicks the pieces of the platen out of the way and goes over to take it out of her hands. “What is thi—”

There’s a picture paperclipped to the first page. It’s one of the sons of bitches who jumped them in the street that night.

“Apparently he works in a bakery downtown,” Sheska says, pointing to the address listed. “Lieutenant Hawkeye said I should come by if anyone reported seeing him, and a patrolling officer just called i—”

Ed snaps the folder shut and shoves it at her. “Thanks, catch you later.”

“You’re—welcome? Ed, where are you—”

The door falls shut behind him, and he takes off running.

 

 

“Keep the change,” he says, flinging a few bills at the taxi driver as he leaps out. There’s a military policeman standing half a block away, looking nervous, and he hastens over as Ed storms towards his target.

“Aren’t you the Fullmetal Alchemist?” The guy’s green eyes are huge. “Did Colonel Mustang send you?”

“Something like that,” Ed says.

He slams the door open. A little bell tinkles feebly. The goon from the other night—the one who snapped Ed’s shoulder out of its socket and tried to put a bullet in Roy’s head—emerges from the back room, toweling at his hands. He looks up and freezes.

“Good morning, motherfucker,” Ed says.

The asshole has the gall to yell for help and scramble behind the counter—an escape attempt that fails pretty spectacularly when Ed tugs the knife out of the back of his belt and throws. Sleeve pinned, flesh narrowly avoided, face pale, Asshole looks a whole lot less threatening than he did in the dark.

Ed plants both hands on the counter and vaults over, swinging his legs to avoid the cash register; flour poofs around his feet as his boots land on the floor again. Asshole is staring slack-jawed, and then he musters the brains to wrench at Ed’s knife and jerk it free from the wall—too late, though, because Ed’s got the second knife out, and he’s shoving his prey up against the pricing sign, forearm pressed to the bastard’s throat.

There’s a second where Ed actually thinks about killing him. This piece of shit swindled his way into a gun, recruited a buddy, and went after Roy in the dark— _Roy_ , who is hopeful and hurting; _Roy_ , who has never been so defenseless; _Roy_ , who is the embodiment of all the things Amestris needs. This piece of shit was either going to end Roy’s life or hold it for ransom to avenge the imprisonment of a pompous dick who tried to throw the country and its entire populace to the wolves. Ed could show him what _vengeance_ means. Ed could cut his throat open with this gleaming blade and watch all of the hate pour out and splash down his front. Ed could make damn sure that this fuckhead never gets the chance to pick his next victim.

Except that he couldn’t. He can’t. Murder isn’t in him. Kimblee said that makes him weak, and Kimblee was probably right. Then again, the rules Kimblee played by destroyed him, in the end, and Ed’s still here.

This man is a human being. He’s squirming, and pleading, and there’s sweat on his forehead and a desperate gleam in his eye. After what Ed did to _Al_ —after what he couldn’t do for Nina, after what he indirectly did to Hughes—he cannot deny another human being a second chance.

“Sir!” the policeman says. “I’m supposed to arrest him now that I have backup, sir!”

Ed digs his elbow into Asshole’s collarbone and then steps back. Asshole gasps for air, unsure whether to focus on Ed’s retreat or the cop’s drawn revolver, and Ed picks up his knife and climbs back over the countertop.

“You don’t have to call me that,” Ed says. “I’m not military anymore.”

The cop blinks at him. “You’re… not? But you’re so famo—”

Ed slides the knives back into their places. “Just cuff him or whatever. Roy’s gonna be pissed.”

“Am I indeed?” a very familiar voice asks from the door.

Hitomi is right beside him, and Hawkeye is right behind him. There’s a little bit of flour dust still drifting in the air, and he’s backlit in the doorway.

“I figure,” Ed says. He takes a deep breath and cuts to the chase, moving directly towards them. “Which is why I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“Not until you’ve been debriefed and cleared of the charge of battering a civilian,” Roy says, and there’s a cold tone to his voice that Ed _despises_ —a layer of condescension and disappointment, like he has any right to judge.

“Fuck your debriefing,” Ed says. “He’s not a civilian; he’s a criminal, and I didn’t hurt him anyway. Get out of my way.”

He tries to shoulder past, and Roy grabs his arm and almost— _almost_ —looks into his eyes.

“ _Edward_.” His voice is low and flat now, and his eyes are like obsidian whether or not they’re any good for seeing. “That was reckless, irresponsible, dangerous, and illegal. Do you understand me?”

“I dunno,” Ed says. “Are you trying to say that you worry about me?”

Roy’s eyes narrow, and his mouth tenses into a thin line. His grip on Ed’s arm tightens until it starts to pinch. “Of course I do, you _twit_.”

“Don’t,” Ed says. “You don’t have time. Do me a favor and worry about yourself.”

Three very long seconds pass, and then Roy uncurls his fingers and steps past Ed. “This conversation is far from finished.”

Ed can hear his heart in his ears with every stride as he ducks past Hawkeye and walks the two miles home.

 

 

The problem, Ed thinks as he lies on top of his bed deflecting Al’s attempts to determine why he’s pouting, is that Roy is _too_ good. The problem is that Roy evokes a suffocating abundance of complicated feelings, and he makes Ed feel warm and wanted and deeply content, and at the same time small and undeserving and destabilized. The problem is that Ed likes this too much, which means he’s waiting for it to go to shit, and he resents it for keeping him in suspense.

Roy makes his lungs burn and his ribs ache. Ed has been drowning in the mind-numbing day-to-day minutiae ever since they all scraped together a victory, and every moment with Roy is a gasp of air.

The problem is that Roy gives him meaning. And the power that Roy has over him is _terrifying_.

The problem is that now it’s all or nothing.


	7. Blind Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter is loooooooong. Thank you _so_ much for being here. ♥ Enjoy your happy ending, ~~if you know what I MEAN~~. ♥

Last night Roy dreamt in black, white, and red—red for blood, for the flame array, for unblinking eyes. The sky was red, and the desert was gray, and then there was Ed in his old coat, with his arms full of carnations. He pressed them into Roy’s dripping hands and said _They’re painkillers, Colonel; just take them—please_.

“Elixir of life, sir?” Riza asks. The mug clinks down on his desk. He’s turned his furniture to face the door again in order to read the lines of light.

“You’re a mind-reader,” Roy says, reaching forward until his fingertips find the handle of the mug.

“I don’t need to be,” Riza says. “Your ‘help, I need caffeine’ expression has only grown more pronounced since you lost your sight.”

“Is that so.”

“Yes, sir.”

He blows on the surface of the coffee and sips it. It’s perfect. “What would I do without you, Lieutenant?”

“Die, I suppose,” Riza says.

“I don’t think there’s any supposing about it,” Roy says. “Can you get me Sergeant Fuery’s analysis of the downtown power grid? I told Grumman I’d have added my commentary by this afternoon, and Havoc’s due at ten.”

“Certainly, sir.” She crosses to the door, leaving it open as she sorts through the filing cabinets, which is why Roy can hear the outer door opening.

“If you keep hanging out here,” Breda says, “you’re going to get conscripted.”

“I don’t believe that’s legally tenable,” Falman says.

“Good morning, Edward,” Riza says.

“Hi,” Ed says. “I need a typewriter. A durable one this time.”

“I fixed the last one,” Fuery says. A cabinet door opens, and then there’s a _clunk_ on the tabletop. “I wrote it into an expense report and said there was a very localized earthquake.”

“You should get promoted,” Ed says. “I think I’ve got the typebar momentum thing down now; it has to transfer _enough_ ink without… anyway. Pretend I’m not here.”

“Did you and the colonel have glorious makeup sex last night?” Breda asks.

“Today’s platen is going down your throat if you don’t shut up.”

“Whoa. You the expert on putting things in throats now?”

“Second Lieutenant Breda,” Riza says sharply, “please refrain from sexually harassing Colonel Mustang’s alchemical consultant.”

Roy, who is currently scrubbing at his face with both hands, can almost hear the glares.

“Sorry,” Breda says. “I didn’t mean to get that crude.”

“Whatever,” Ed says, and Roy knows—knows he’s hunched his shoulders and donned his darkest scowl. Typewriter keys start clacking like mad.

Riza comes back in and sets a report down on his desk. He can feel her gaze on him.

“I didn’t do anything,” he says in an undertone.

She heads back for the door. “Perhaps that’s the problem, sir.”

He’s only just lit up Fuery’s notes on inefficient wiring when there’s a tentative knock at the door.

…well, shit. That narrows it down.

“Ed?” he asks.

“The one and only.” The mismatched footsteps forge across the room and smack something new onto his desk. “Typewritten by yours truly. I already drew the last line for the circle on the back, so let me know if the brightness is all right.”

“Edward,” Roy says.

“Don’t wear it out,” Ed says, and then he’s out the door again.

Roy stifles a pointed sigh and switches Fuery’s report out for the typewriter sheet, laying it over the array on his desk. It takes him a moment to process the shapes of the letters—he’s spent the last few weeks acclimatizing to all of the handwriting that passes through his office, and the regularity of typeface is slightly bizarre. The characters are more or less evenly stamped and therefore more or less evenly lit; once he’s skimmed the first sentence a couple times, his brain is generous enough to change gears and cooperate.

 _Look,_ Ed writes, which is funny in the weary, tragic, oddly sweet way that Ed’s blind jokes usually are. _I don’t regret what I did, but I’m sorry if it made your work harder. I guess you probably know by now that sometimes I don’t think things through because I’m just FEELING too much. That dickwad scared the crap out of me with what he did to us—to you—and I wanted him to understand what it’s like. I wanted him to experience that world-collapsing feeling, because that shit can’t just be described. I know you think I went too far. I did go too far. I just want you to get it, okay? I know it was a stupid kid reaction, but it was real. My feelings were real._

_It’s just that he’s everything that’s wrong with this country—with people, honestly—and you’re everything that’s right. So it’s not fucking fair that he can overpower you. And I never want it to happen again._

_If you’re going to be pissed at me, fine, but if you really think about it it’s kind of your fault for insisting on curry. I totally said we should get sandwiches._

Roy leans back and reaches down to pet Hitomi’s ears. He really needs a few minutes’ silence to contemplate all possible courses of ac—

“Love letter?” Breda asks cheerfully.

“Second Lieutenant,” Riza says in the This Is Your Last Warning voice.

“If he would ’fess up,” Breda says, “I wouldn’t have t—”

“There’s nothing to talk about!” Ed says. “Get it through your goddamn _skull_ , will you? I help him do his damn _job_ , and we have dinner sometimes. That’s it. End of story. End of book.”

“That’s not what he thinks.”

“You don’t know what he thinks!”

“I’m a strategist, bucko.”

“No, you’re an _asshole_!”

Roy stands, and Hitomi’s tags clink as she gets up to accompany him. He flattens both hands against the door, pushes it open wide, and folds his arms across his chest.

“Neither of you knows what I think,” he says. “I think, Edward, that if you just wanted to help me do my job, you wouldn’t put up with all of the crap you get for it. And I think that if _I_ just wanted you to help me do my job, I wouldn’t have let you become a fixture in my home. At this point, what I think is that it’s time we made a decision and stuck to it.”

Ed’s voice is faint. “It’s not that simple.”

“Yes,” Roy says, “it is.”

“I—”

Roy moves towards the sound of that syllable. He raises his hand and brushes Ed’s shoulder, which leads him to Ed’s hair. He twines all five fingers into Ed’s ponytail, tugs to tilt Ed’s head back, and leans in to kiss him until he learns to take a good thing and run with it.

Ed is absolutely delicious today. When Roy first catches his mouth, he goes entirely still—but then his right hand fumbles against Roy’s uniform front and curls in it, and he hauls Roy in closer to reciprocate. This isn’t a quick, haphazard thing like either of the two before; this is _deliberate_ , hard and hot and deep and almost vicious. Ed’s tongue twists against his, and Ed’s teeth scrape at his lip, and a jerk on Ed’s hair earns a hiss. Roy flicks the tip of his tongue against the roof of Ed’s mouth and drags the boy in closer when he startles; Roy has so many tricks to teach him now—

Breda wolf-whistles. That’s a mistake, because it gives Roy an auditory cue at which to aim his rude gesture.

The door opens, and _that_ could be problematic—Roy comes up for air and prays to several individuals he doesn’t usually believe in that the newcomer isn’t Führer Grumman.

“Well,” Havoc says. “Can’t decide whether I’m early or right on time.”

At least this saves Roy the trouble of breaking the news to his team.

“Um,” Ed says. Roy’s close enough to _feel_ the warmth of his cheeks reddening. “I’m just—I’m going to—go—and—maybe—see you later—or something.”

Roy backs up a step to leave room for Ed to get out of the chair. “I’ll call you.”

“Yeah. Okay. Um.” He clears his throat. “You know what? You’re just a bunch of pathetic gossips who meddle in other people’s personal lives because you don’t _have_ any of your own. So fuck all of you.” He swallows. “Well, not the sergeant or Second Lieutenant Falman or Lieutenant Hawkeye. You guys are okay. Really just fuck Havoc and Breda. Fuck you guys. Anybody who laughs is getting shanked.”

By the shuffling, he gathers his design papers in a rush and rockets from the room before anyone can challenge his threat. A slightly awed silence sees him out.

“While I’m glad you finally made an unequivocal expression of your feelings, sir,” Riza says, “next time I would suggest a venue other than the office.”

“Wait,” Havoc says. “So you’re _not_ sleeping with Ed?”

“Not _yet_ ,” Breda says.

 

 

Roy twirls one of Ed’s pens as he dials.

The line catches. “Hello?”

Flickers of heat in his stomach and a lightness in his chest, just like that.

“It’s me,” he says.

“Are we having phone sex on an actual phone this time?” Ed asks.

“What?” In all honesty, he should have been expecting this tangent. “No. We can do better than that.”

Ed is quiet for a long moment. “We’re—we’re really a thing now.”

“We are unequivocally a thing,” Roy says. “What _kind_ of thing I don’t believe we’ve entirely determined. In any case, I just wanted to warn you that I’m still at the office. I’m hoping to flee while the lieutenant’s back is turned—”

Riza’s voice drifts in from the other room. “Good luck, sir.”

“—within the next half-hour or so, but I can’t make any guarantees. I didn’t want to keep you waiting.”

“Oh, I’ll be waiting,” Ed says. “But I’ve gotten pretty patient over the years.”

“I’ll do my best to be worth waiting for.”

Ed’s quiet again, and then Roy can hear the smile in his voice. “That’s the kind of thing we are,” he says.

 

 

When Riza deposits Roy and Hitomi on a curb he knows by its angles and its ambient noise, she shuts the engine off, and he goes tense. “What is it?”

“The lights are on,” Riza says. The next series of sounds unmistakably accompanies practiced hands drawing a cartridge out of a gun and then pushing it back into place. “I’ll just walk you to the door, sir.”

He wants to refuse. He wants to scoff and rationalize, to appreciate the sentiment and then wave off the concern. He wants to be able to do this, to do something _so simple_ , on his own.

But he can’t. The fact is that things have changed. The fact is that the contours of the world are entirely different and significantly more dangerous without sight. The fact is that there’s a lot he _can’t_ do, and he owes honesty about his new limits to the people who care about him.

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” he says.

She starts up the front walk, Hitomi trots after her, and Roy trails. “You didn’t _leave_ the lights on, by any chance, sir?”

He tries not to smile. There’s a chance this is something bad; amusement is inappropriate. “Exactly what are you trying to imply, Lieutenant?”

“That you have had more important things to worry about lately than your electricity bill.”

The doorknob rattles softly, the hinges squeal, and she steps lightly over the threshold.

Hitomi creeps forward, sniffs at the air a few times, and then returns to nose insistently at Roy’s hand. If he’s not mistaken, that means—

“Whoa!” Ed calls from what sounds like the top of the stairs. “Don’t point that thing at me! I made dinner!”

Riza holsters her weapon. “You should really warn me if you’re going to—”

“Break into Roy’s house?” Ed asks. “But then it wouldn’t be a surprise inspection. We’re revamping the security around here, by the way. Are you free this weekend, Lieutenant?”

“You _made dinner_?” Roy cuts in. “I didn’t know you could make toast.”

“I can’t,” Ed says. “Turns out I can’t make dinner either. So there’s takeout from the noodle place. And you’re going to _like it_.”

“I’m sure he will,” Riza says. “In that case, I’ll leave you to it. Goodnight, sir.”

“And you, Lieutenant.”

She pulls the door shut behind her. Momentarily the car’s engine turns over, and it rumbles off down the street.

“Please tell me you didn’t break a window to get in,” Roy says.

“Didn’t have to,” Ed says. “You left the one in your bedroom unlocked.”

“That’s on the second floor,” Roy says.

He can _almost_ hear Ed blinking at him.

“There isn’t a tree,” Roy says.

He can hear his own watch ticking.

“You _scaled the wall_ to climb into my _bedroom window_?” Roy says.

“I picked it up from Ling,” Ed says. “Do you want noodles or not?”

 

 

When critical levels of noodle consumption have been reached, Roy collapses onto the couch in the living room and sorts through the stack of reports on the coffee table, which Riza categorized with differently-shaped sticky notes.

“Oh, _hell_ , no,” Ed says from the doorway.

Roy looks up, for all the good that does. “What?”

“We made out in your office,” Ed says, stomping towards him; “we decided that we’re a thing, I climbed the fucking wall to get into your house before you, I made a strong effort at a romantic dinner, and you’re trying to _work_ tonight? I repeat: hell fucking _no_.”

Ed stops right in front of the couch, and Roy attempts to shrink back into it a bit. “There’s… a lot of reading to d—”

The couch creaks as Ed climbs up to straddle Roy’s lap, fisting both hands in the front of his uniform and crushing their mouth together.

Ed’s let his hair down, and it swings against Roy’s neck and slithers across his throat as they twist together, chests knocking, mouths melding, and Ed’s hips grind into his. This time Ed’s kiss is furious—searingly possessive, sloppy, reckless, hard. He nips Roy’s bottom lip sharply and snickers when Roy squirms, and then he buries both hands in Roy’s hair, and everything’s forgiven. Before Roy’s quite remembered how breathing generally works, Ed’s spreading his legs a little wider still—oh, holy hell; he can do the splits, can’t he?—and pressing his tightly-muscled ass down against Roy’s dick. How in the blazes did he get to be such a fucking _tease_?

Roy is going to have to discourage that kind of behavior. Or maybe he’ll ask for more.

He curls a hand tightly around either of Ed’s hipbones, demonstrates the heavy-breathing-on-wet-lip technique to distract Ed with a sudden need to gasp for oxygen, hefts the weight settled in his lap, and flips them over. He can hear Ed’s hair whip as the boy’s head bounces against a throw pillow, and he plants his hands just above Ed’s shoulders and wedges a knee between the cushion and the couch back to loom more efficiently. Ed growls and wraps both legs around Roy’s waist, snapping his hips up in a way that makes Roy’s brain flounder helplessly.

“You’ve done this before,” Roy notes when he can summon speech again.

Ed snorts. “Why does everyone assume I’m a virgin?”

“You’ve been… busy. And you don’t exactly socialize.”

“No,” Ed says, “but I spent a long time being _busy_ with Captain Pervert before we joined up with the rest of the Anti-Apocalypse Squad.”

…oh. _Oh_. “You—?”

“Let’s just say they don’t call him ‘Greed’ for nothing,” Ed says. “And that Ling’s not going to have any trouble populating the entire country of Xing with his bloodline.”

“Ah,” Roy says. The more he thinks about it—not that he’s thinking particularly clearly at the moment—the more he can’t help wondering. “Wasn’t that… traumatic?”

“It’s not like they took advantage of me,” Ed says. “I mean, they drew up a schedule for whose turn it was, and if I wasn’t interested, I would’ve kicked their combined ass.” The tone of his voice shifts to the one that accompanies his scowl. “Okay, look, I _really_ don’t want to talk about it while I’m trying to have sex with _you_.”

“That’s fair,” Roy says. “I’m sorry; it was just a bit surprisi—”

Ed’s arms wrap around his neck and drag him down into another wet, desperate kiss.

Roy’s dizzy with it—with the heat of Ed’s mouth, with the tangle of their tongues, with the clench of Ed’s fingers in his hair, with the weight of Ed’s metal foot on the small of his back. His heart’s slamming, his blood’s seething, and he can feel his right hand trembling as he smoothes it down Ed’s side and slides it under the hem of his shirt.

He draws back and rests his forehead against Ed’s for a moment while he pants for breath.

“You taste like noodles,” he says, spreading his fingers over Ed’s ribs, wanting a way to touch all of him at once.

Ed arches up into his palm, and he frees his hands from Roy’s hair and sets to undoing the front of the uniform. “You taste like shut up and fuck me.”

Roy peels Ed’s shirt off, careful not to catch the unruly hair, and tosses it onto the back of the couch. While Ed’s still fighting with the buttons of his, he sits back and runs his fingertips slowly over every inch of Ed’s skin—shoulders, collarbones, automail scars, pectorals, ribs, ribs, ribs, stomach, hips. “Evidently your previous partners left you woefully unschooled in the fine art of foreplay.”

Ed makes a soft half-sighing sound, pausing in his removal of Roy’s clothing to rise into the contact. “All right. So teach me.”

“I would be honored,” Roy says, and he bends to kiss his way damply down Ed’s chest this time, hands working slowly and deliberately at Ed’s belt. He breathes against bare skin as he unzips the fly, and Ed squirms, hips rolling, legs shifting, flesh heating under Roy’s hands.

“Wait,” Ed says.

Roy knew it. He _knew_ it—knew it would come to this, knew it would come to a halt. Knew it was too good to be true. Knew it was better than he deserves.

“The dog is watching,” Ed says.

“I… beg your pardon?”

“The dog,” Ed says, “is in the room, watching us. I don’t want to get it on in front of your _guide dog_.”

Roy tries not to laugh. He does. He makes a valiant effort, and it’s not his fault that it fails. “I don’t think she’s likely to judge.”

“ _Roy_ ,” Ed says, and the way the sounds curl off his tongue just makes Roy want to bite into him and taste every goddamn fiber.

Roy struggles to get words around the flood of saliva in his mouth. “Shall we relocate upstairs?”

“It’s a good fucking thing we never had phone sex,” Ed says, contorting deftly and leaping off the couch. “You are _shit_ at dirty talk.”

“You’re going to hurt my feelings,” Roy says, steadying himself against the couch as his knees wobble a bit. “Hitomi, stay. Good girl.”

“Hurry the fuck up,” Ed calls from the direction of the stairs.

“You have a lot of learning to do,” Roy says.

Ed’s footsteps thunder towards him again. Two hands clasp tightly around his right wrist and tug vigorously. “I said come _on_. Maybe you’re too old to get it up—”

“I’ll show you _old_ , you little _bitch_ —”

“You’re talking dirtier already.”

“That’s because I’m going to whip your ass.”

“I—um.”

Roy will explore the bounds of that stammer thoroughly on an occasion when stumbling up the stairs isn’t monopolizing all of his remaining brainpower. It might present something of a challenge to tie Ed up without the benefit of sight, but Roy thinks he rather likes the sound of that.

Roy drags his hands down Ed’s chest, settles them on the narrow hips, and pushes Ed backwards until his knees hit the edge of the bed, and he flops down onto it, bedsprings protesting. Roy kneels to lick and mouth and nibble and Ed’s stomach, wishing _hard_ that he could see this—that he could watch the flush rising on Ed’s cheeks, watch his fingers curl into the comforter, watch him writhe and send his bright hair flying. But this isn’t the time to discount his blessings; in all honesty he can’t ask for much more. In all honesty, his blood is beating in his ears, and his pants are far too tight, and following the trail of coarse hairs down from Ed’s navel with his tongue is so fucking _glorious_ he almost feels sick.

Ed’s trousers aren’t fitting him terribly well either. Roy thinks perhaps he had better remedy that.

He digs his fingers in underneath all the layers of fabric and draws them down, going for Ed’s cock with his mouth before the slacks are quite out of the way. Ed makes a high, faint noise that sends a jagged shiver down Roy’s spine, and he gets to work tracing his tongue up and down and slowly around and gently into the slit. Ed’s back arches, and his hips jerk; his right hand fists the shoulder of Roy’s half-assembled shirt and tightens until one of the knuckles cracks. Roy deems it high time to quit fucking around and takes Ed all the way into his mouth, sucking hard, pushing upward with his tongue—it’s a struggle to keep the suction and to keep his teeth away from the delicate nerves, especially with the way Ed’s hips buck and drop and twist. Roy’s been sweating since they started, but at the howl of a cry that tears out of Ed’s throat, he gets goosebumps everywhere. The unfulfilled heat in his belly is beginning to ache, and his cock is throbbing for attention; it’s just not _fair_ to leave it straining in his trousers, is it, when there’s so much fucking beauty laid out in front of him that he doesn’t even _need_ to see?

“Sh-shit,” Ed gasps out, and Roy can feel the trill of a shiver that rolls all the way down to his tailbone. “Fucking get up here and fucking _fuck_ me—”

Roy doesn’t really need to be told twice.

He would have expected that he’d be rusty after such a lengthy monogamous marriage to his career goals, but his old habits are sound, and even with the blood in his veins coursing wildly, his muscles remember the moves. It’s the work of moments to hitch Edward further up onto the mattress, grasp his hips, bunch the comforter beneath them, drag his pants the rest of the way off, pitch them onto the floor, and climb up to kneel between his legs.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Ed says, writhing against Roy’s grip on his hipbones. “Goddamn secretaries weren’t exaggerating. I owe Al a thousand cens.”

Roy leans down to mouth wetly at the inside of Ed’s right thigh, flattening a hand on the other and pinning it to the bed in the hopes of not getting an automail foot in a tender place.

Ed _screams_.

Then he pants to catch his breath, and his heels slip against the sheets, and his body tilts—he’s sitting up. “Fucking say something; I feel like I’m talking to myself.”

“I’m concentrating,” Roy says.

“What the fuck requires so much concen—”

Roy lathes both of Ed’s balls throughly and draws them carefully into his mouth, digging the fingernails of both hands into Ed’s thighs.

“ _Ohholyfuck_!”

Roy sucks gently, pauses, and draws back to extract a hair from the inside of his cheek. Ed’s chest is heaving, and his whimpers are almost intense enough to qualify as sobs. Roy smoothes his hands down Ed’s legs, skimming his thumbs over the crescent-shaped indentations left by his own fingernails, hikes Ed’s knees over his shoulders, and ducks again to run the tip of his tongue as lightly as he can down Ed’s perineum.

There’s a ninety percent chance that he’s going to get knocked out by a jerking hipbone or deafened by the keening wails before the night is out, but this is already worth it.

He raises his head and looks in what should be Ed’s direction, provided that Ed hasn’t simply twisted himself apart by now. “Call me an asshole.”

Ed’s voice is high and halting. “Wh… what?”

Roy thinks it’s pretty funny to go from that to wetting the ring of puckered flesh slowly with his tongue. Maybe when Ed’s done screeching like a cat and disheveling the bedclothes, he’ll appreciate the humor more.

Gauging sensitivity by the volume of Ed’s responses, Roy dips his tongue in, presses deeper, flicks the tip, breathes moistly, and concludes with a solid lick.

When he sets his hands on Ed’s hips again, the boy’s whole body is quivering.

“Fuck.” Ed’s breathing’s light and desperate. “I’m going to c-come all over your fucking face in a minute if you k-keep that up.”

Roy licks his lips slowly, casting a sightless pensive gaze towards the ceiling. “Have you learned a couple things?”

The brief silence disconcerts him just a little—and then Ed laughs, albeit breathlessly.

“Point taken,” Ed says. “Foreplay is the greatest fucking thing since… anything… or whatever. Now seriously fuck me before I pass out from an endorphin overdose.”

“I don’t remember reading about those during my studies of biology,” Roy says.

“I’ll study _your_ fucking biology— _get down here_ —”

Roy can’t exactly say no to that.

Ed groans loudly and more than a bit suggestively while Roy’s fingertips search the drawer of the nightstand. He really should have taken his pants off first so that he could at least have the friction of the sheets underneath him to alleviate the ravenous _need_ —but he can’t do too many things at once, and at the moment the drawer is a foreign landscape composed of vaguely familiar objects. He didn’t open this drawer when Riza was helping him emboss labels onto his belongings, which perhaps was a mistake; surely the awkwardness wouldn’t have been as frustrating as the current oblivion… _This_ feels like glass; the bottle’s the right shape; he’s fairly certain the cork was this tall.

He holds it out in Ed’s general direction for inspection.

“‘Infused with lavender’?” Ed asks. “Did some spiteful ex-girlfriend give that to you and tell you to spend some quality time with your hand?”

“Lavender is supposed to be a relaxant,” Roy says, cautiously tipping a generous portion onto his fingers.

“It’s not gonna relax me,” Ed says. “I’m horny as fuck, and the solution is _not_ some fucking flowe—”

Roy trails one fingertip slowly up the underside of Ed’s dick, and the slick coolness of the oil makes him choke on the rest of the dismissal—rather fittingly, Roy thinks.

These trousers are going to have to be cleaned soon. Roy doesn’t care; he lets the oil smear everywhere as he undoes the fastenings and then kicks them off onto the carpet. He has another clean pair anyway. Maybe. It doesn’t matter—it’s not like his entire team doesn’t already know he’s fucking Ed right now; and if he ends up in a higher-level meeting, he’ll just keep a clipboard in his lap.

Ed sighs throatily at the dapple of Roy’s damp fingers against that fine, fine ass. Roy leans in and mouths at his neck, softly at first, and then with a hint of teeth.

“Ready?” he murmurs into Ed’s pulsing veins.

“Born ready,” Ed says. He snickers. “When you were fifteen.”

“Please don’t mention that while I’m having sex with you _ever again_.”

Ed starts to protest, and then Roy presses a finger into him, and the bitchiness immediately dissolves into mewling.

Fuck, Roy doesn’t want to wait. Roy doesn’t want to prepare. Roy doesn’t want to ease them both into it; he wants to slam his dick into that tight ass even if it tears them both apart; he wants all of it, now, this fucking second, and it’s criminal that he has to slow down—

His shirt’s unbuttoned, but he left it on in the rush to remove the necessary articles. Untucked now, it’s draping against Ed’s thighs as Roy works him open feverishly, and when the fabric whispers over exposed skin, Ed twitches hard. Roy’s heart pounds distractingly loudly, and he stops with three fingers buried in Ed’s gorgeously hot little ass to stroke himself with his other hand. His dick is so fucking sensitive that he notices the healing scabs on his own fingertips for the first time tonight. They scrape and drag a little bit, and the change in texture is fucking marvelous.

Just not as fucking marvelous as what comes next.

“Now,” Ed gasps, arching against Roy’s hand. “Now, _now_ , fuck, Roy, come on—”

Roy is only too happy to oblige.

For a second Ed’s almost _too_ tight, and the sweat on Roy’s forehead stings as all of his nerves go haywire—too tight, too much, too fucking _perfect_ , and it hurts—

Ed snaps his hips up and unleashes another feral animal scream, both hands fumbling to fist themselves in Roy’s shirt, hauling him in for an overwhelming kiss. Their bodies crush together, damp and sticky with oil and sweat, and Ed hooks his flesh leg around Roy’s waist and arches his back, and the tremor that tears through Roy rattles him down to his toes. It’s not supposed to be this good. Nothing is supposed to be _this_ good.

Apparently Edward didn’t get that memo.

“Oh, _shit_ , yes.” Ed releases one fistful of shirt and tangles his fingers in Roy’s hair instead, tugging meaningfully. “This is what I was fucking waiting for. God _damn_ you for making me wait so fucking _long_.”

It feels like the room’s spinning, and then like Roy’s in an elevator. His heart’s expanded to fill his ribcage, and it’s still swelling—his whole skeleton’s going to snap any second now; they’re so _close_ , and it’s so _right_ , and his whole body’s aflame. He braces one forearm on the bed and slides the other hand up Ed’s side; he leans down and licks sweat off of Ed’s breastbone, out of the hollow of his collarbones, from along his throat—salty-sweet-sweltering.

“Hey,” Ed says. “Why is sex the only time you _stop_ talking? It’s fucking weird. You’re freaking me out.” He swallows, tendons tensing under Roy’s wandering lips, and pulls harder on Roy’s hair. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Roy says. Because he can’t say _I want to wake up next to you every morning and nestle in and hold you while you start to stir; I want to wash your hair and rub your feet and kiss your ears and massage around your automail port until you turn to jelly in my hands; I want to bring your coffee exactly how you like it best; I want to push you into a snowbank and lick the flakes off of your cheeks; I want to curl up on the couch with you underneath a blanket and listen to the rain; I would give anything I have to_ see _you, Edward, because I want to look you in the eyes and tell you that I love you, but I can’t._

_And if I told you now, you’d run._

“So much better than fine,” Roy says, and shifts his hips so that Ed gasps and then moans.

It’s too easy from there—Ed’s ferocious and feline but _pliable_ , and he’s having the time of his life. That’s good for Roy’s ego, and it’s also good for the sex; Roy rolls him over, flips him back and forth, twists him, bends him, takes him every which way, and Ed keeps nipping and snarking and tussling, elastic and hot-skinned and fighting back. It’s tight and wet and intricate and a little bit rough, and Roy’s hands and mouth go questing to discover every centimeter of Ed’s body as it moves under (and over, and next to, and around) his own.

Ed kisses him hard, too hard, teeth drawing blood from Roy’s bottom lip, as he comes with a characteristic, half-muffled “ _Fuck_!”

And Roy gasps “ _Ed_ —” and follows, thinking _How can I be so lucky and feel so cold?_

The moment Roy collapses onto the bed, Ed sprawls like a starfish, right arm splayed over Roy’s chest, face squished into his shoulder.

“Damn,” Ed says. “Let’s do that every night. No, that’s not enough. Let’s do that every night and every morning and sometimes during lunch. _Instead_ of lunch.” His smile is pressed against Roy’s bicep, and then it fades. “You’re not okay at all, you bastard. What’s—was it something I did? I mean, I thought—it seemed like—”

“I need you,” Roy says. “I can’t do this without you. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Ed is silent for a long moment, and when he speaks his voice shakes. “That’s the oxytocin talking.”

“No,” Roy says, “it’s not.”

Ed swallows. The hoarse edge to his voice persists. “What do you want me to say?”

“You don’t have to say anything.” He extricates himself from under Ed’s arm and sits up. His skin is crawling; it’s freezing in here; his mouth is dry. His eyes are burning, but the curtain hasn’t lifted; everything is black. He starts sliding towards the side of the bed, and Ed catches his arm.

“Don’t you try to fucking esc—are you—? _Roy_ , fuck, you dumbass, just—come here—”

Ed wraps both arms around him this time, tightly. Roy lets the tears roll down his face and drip onto the bedsheets; he’s spent and tired and disadvantaged and sick and scared and shamed. He can’t do this alone. Not anymore. Not in a world that’s indistinguishable.

“I’m right here,” Ed says quietly. “And I’m going to stay here. What the hell, you asshole? I’m _here_ , okay? And I’m staying. I want to stay.”

Roy buries his face in Ed’s hair and tries to believe him.

 

 

When the alarm rings, Roy opens his eyes and expects it to make a difference. Thirty years of habit had convinced him that his privilege was a right.

“Fuckin’ _early_ ,” the warm mass against his chest mutters.

Roy reaches over and flips the switch on the clock to stop the noise. “Sorry to wake you.”

He shifts to crawl out of the bed, suddenly extremely aware of the fact that he’s naked, but Ed’s hand catches his arm again. “Hey, slow down a sec.”

Roy stills and waits—he doesn’t know what for, and he feels too emptied-out to care.

Ed’s voice says “Good morning” from very close, and then Ed kisses him, softly, before drawing back.

If only Roy could see his face. Was that a joke? Surely even Edward’s sense of humor isn’t so twisted as to find that funny.

“That’s how it’s supposed to go, right?” Ed asks, sounding nervous, after a lengthy pause. “Now that we’re a thing, I mean.”

“Oh,” Roy says, and he _wants_ to react, but the hollowness swallows everything. “Yes. Good morning. Excuse me; I need a shower.”

“You smell fine to me,” Ed says, and that helpless earnestness is a shard of glass ramming through the center of Roy’s chest, and he can’t… he _can’t_ …

He gathers his things and goes to lock himself into the bathroom, stepping carefully en route to avoid the abandoned clothing on the floor.

 

 

When he reemerges, the bedsprings are creaking softly, and Hitomi’s tags are clinking.

“I got some new clothes out for you,” Ed says. “I couldn’t tell if you had a specific system or anything, and if you do, I remember where everything came from, so I can just put it back.”

Roy stands there in his underwear, toweling at his dripping hair, and tries to breathe around the tightness in his throat. “Anything is fine.” He balls the towel up and just… holds it. “Thank you.”

Is Ed smiling? Or is he scared?

Roy should be terrified of the man he is this morning, but he’s too numb for fear.

 

 

Riza sets the coffee mug down on his desktop and guides his hand to it. “One step at a time,” she says.

Roy runs his thumb down the curve of the handle. “What’s the fucking point when I can’t see where I’m headed?”

“The fucking point, sir, is the same one it’s always been.” She takes a deep breath. “You’re stronger than this. I think you know that, too. We had days like this at the beginning, remember? You’ve got to ride this one out. Let me help you. Let the big picture sink in. And just take it one step at a time.”

He draws the mug towards him. Riza sets down a file.

“You’re here,” she says. “And you’re holding on. All you have to do is not let go.”

 

 

His desk phone rings while the others are at lunch and Riza is fetching him something.

“Mustang,” he says.

“Alphonse Elric for you, Colonel?”

“Put him through.”

“Right away, sir.”

He rolls his pen back and forth a couple times. The line catches.

“Colonel?”

“How do you keep getting past the operators?” Roy asks.

“I have special clearance,” Alphonse says. “And by that I mean that I’m really good at flirting on the phone.”

Roy rubs his eyes, not that it matters. “What do you want?”

Alphonse is quiet for a long moment. “Brother spent the morning hugging a cat again.”

“He’s warming to your pets. Congratulations.”

“Thank you for the extraordinarily unhelpful sarcasm,” Al says. “Brother ricochets through a lot of moods, but the swings tend to be brief, and he’s vocal about them—mostly he just wants to be reassured that his feelings are valid. It’s when he gets quiet that I worry. And when he gets quiet and brings the cats into it, I worry a _lot_ , because something is very wrong.”

Roy breathes in, breathes out, and breathes in again. “I don’t know if I can do this today, Alphonse.”

“Tough shit, Colonel,” Al says. “We’re doing it right this second, and you’re going to take it like a man. Listen to me. I don’t think Ed has ever been in love before. I don’t think he even realizes that he is now—certainly not consciously. To Ed, love is something married people have. It’s something you either get, or you don’t, like alchemy, and you’ll know if you have the capacity for it by the time you can read. I think he’s completely separated that abstract concept from the reality—and the reality is that he wants you to be happy, and he wants to _be_ something that makes you happy. Ed’s causes have always been based in love—trying to bring Mom back, trying to bring my body back, trying to save all of the people who’d looked out for us, trying to make some kind of tiny reparation for what we let happen to Nina—and I think that’s made it so that he can’t tell the difference anymore. He loves you, and he’s dedicated everything he’s got to helping you. To him, those are basically the same thing.”

The receiver feels strange and very heavy in Roy’s hand. “But this is all—speculation.”

“Colonel,” Al says, with a faint but detectable undertone of _Please don’t tempt me to destroy you_ , “I know my brother.”

“But you said yourself that he’s never been in this situation before, so how can you be so su—”

“Ed spent the four years after our failed transmutation pouring himself into righting every wrong he could get his hands on,” Al says. “I spent those four years watching people so that when the time came, I would remember how to be human. Brother is hopeless at nuance; I’m not. Just trust me, Colonel. It can’t hurt you at this point.”

Somehow Roy doubts that. “Then what do I do from here?”

“This is the only thing Ed has wanted for himself since we were children,” Al says. “I suggest that you give it to him.”

Roy runs a hand through his hair. “I don’t—”

“Oops,” Al says. “Cat emergency. Oh, _God_ , that’s gross. Talk to you later.”

The line goes dead. Roy misses the ability to stare incredulously at his telephone.

 

 

Roy tries to make out lampposts for the duration of the drive home, to mixed success. He thinks he can _almost_ pinpoint them when the car is stopped, but the orange blots are so fuzzy that he could be simply imagining them and fooling himself.

Havoc rolls to a stop. “Uh… Colonel, the lights are on in Casa Mustang.”

Roy collects his papers. “Is the front second-floor window open?”

“Let me… yeah, it is—why?”

“Ed broke in again,” Roy says. “You’re dismissed, Lieutenant; thank you.”

Sure enough, Hitomi maintains her calm as Roy lets them into the house.

“I could make you a copy of the key, you know,” he says as he closes the door behind him.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Ed asks from the direction of the living room. “Um… how was your day?”

“Stand still and say something,” Roy says, starting towards his voice.

“Huh?”

Roy’s outstretched hand grazes Ed’s shoulder, which is enough of a spatial reference for Roy to wrap both arms around him and hold him close.

“My day,” Roy says, “is better now.”

Ed snuggles into his chest, both hands curling into the fabric of the uniform. “It’s been night for a couple hours, although I guess it’s not like _you_ can tell.”

 _We’re a good thing,_ Roy thinks. _With you, I am part of something good._

He takes Ed’s right hand in his and leads the way into the kitchen, Hitomi trailing. He fixes her dinner first.

“I was thinking,” Ed says, “about when you used that flashbang the night that those fuckers came after us.”

“I got the idea from you,” Roy says, stroking Hitomi’s back once and then stepping away to let her eat. “After you mentioned smoke bombs, I went to the chemist—who, for the record, sounded like my shopping list was going to give him nightmares.”

“I love fucking with chemists,” Ed says. “It’s a time-honored alchemist tradition. Anyway, I was thinking that… well, that night it looked like you could kind of see for a minute while the thing was going off.”

Roy opens the fridge and starts assessing its contents with his hands. “Not very clearly, but for a moment it was bright enough to see outlines. It’s been a matter of necessity to develop my memory for relative positions, and I went from there.”

“That’s what I figured,” Ed says slowly. “I’ve been thinking… maybe we should put together a bunch of those, just to be safe. And maybe we can come up with something that works that way on a smaller scale—for stuff that you _want_ to get a glimpse of.”

“Full disclosure,” Roy says. “I would probably only use those during sex.”

Ed makes a choking noise, and Roy would bet both hands that he’s blushing. “You’re a perv. Well—whatever. I’ll draft a couple designs. Should be interesting, at least.”

Roy pauses in fondling the edibles. “Ed, you don’t have to do so much on my account.”

“Of course I don’t _have_ to,” Ed says. Roy can hear him starting to grin. “You think I’d put up with all your shit if it felt like an obligation?”

“I don’t know,” Roy says.

“Yeah, you do. You know _me_.”

 

 

Tonight, Ed curls up against Roy’s side on the living room couch. Everything is going delightfully until Roy prepares the files that he _really_ needs to read in order to make up for today’s malaise, at which point Ed huffs out a frustrated noise.

“Fuck this shit,” he says, leaning forward and pulling half of the blanket with him.

But he doesn’t get up and leave—there’s a bit of scrabbling, and he shifts, and then he settles back down by Roy’s shoulder.

Roy clears his throat. “What… was that?”

“I brought a pair of sunglasses,” Ed says. “And now I’m wearing them, indoors, _at night_. I hope you’re happy.”

“I am, actually,” Roy says, and it’s the truth.

 

 

Ed flings his flesh leg over both of Roy’s and wriggles in as close as he can get. “I reserve the right to elbow you mercilessly if you start to snore.”

Roy adjusts the comforter over Ed’s shoulders and strokes his hair back. “I don’t snore. You do, but it sounds more like a kitten purring than anything else.”

In retrospect, he deserves to have freezing cold automail pressed against his feet.

When both the brief shove-fight and the subsequent interlude of hair-tugging have concluded, Ed calms down enough to get preoccupied sketching invisible arrays on Roy’s chest with his fingertip.

“Edward,” Roy says quietly.

“Nnh?”

“What color is Hitomi?”

Ed’s hand stops moving, and the clock ticks in the silence.

“What?” Ed says at last.

“I never got around to asking,” Roy says. “I know what she _looks_ like, more or less, but I don’t know what color she is.”

Ed is quiet even longer this time.

“Her back and her ears and stuff are kind of a caramel color,” he says just when Roy’s about to tell him to forget the whole thing. “And her stomach and her front legs and the bottom half of her face are white. She sort of looks like crême brulée.”

Roy pauses. “Did you just compare my guide dog to a dessert?”

“…maybe.”

The next question takes twice as long to work up to, and Roy almost doesn’t get it out at all. There are just so many ways it could go awry, and—

“Do you think…”

“Occasionally,” Ed says. “It’s strenuous, though, thinking all the time.”

“You little bastard.”

“Who you ca—”

“Do you think I should find another place to live? Somewhere smaller than this, but larger than your and your brother’s flat—enough space for our small shared menagerie of domesticated animals, at any rate. If you think Alphonse would even be interested, that is. If you would be. If—”

“Yes,” Ed says. “Wait, let me rephrase that: _fuck yes_.”

“You really—?”

“I really,” Ed says. “But we need to make sure it’s someplace with thick walls.”

“Or that Alphonse’s room is at the other end of the property.”

“And that there’s an area to shut the cats in if we want to get busy on the couch.”

“And that the bathtub is big enough for two.”

Ed shivers. “Damn right.”

Roy draws a deep breath, releases it, and smiles. “Things are looking up.”

“I can’t believe I got you into blind jokes,” Ed says.

“I like to think I’m a vision of eloquent wit.”

“Okay, stop.”

“I can’t wait to figuratively see what the future holds.”

“Crap. This is my own fucking fault.”

Roy grins slowly. “It was a small error. Suits you that way.”

“It _what_?”

Roy merely smirks.

“You are dead to me,” Ed says. “From now on, I expect you to stay fifty feet away from my perfectly normally-sized person at all times.”

“That’s a tall order—or not.”

“Oh, fuck _you_.”

Roy kisses his cheek. “As soon as possible, please.”

Ed squirms, but he doesn’t pull away. “I am so fucking stupid for liking you so much.”

Roy hugs him closer. “You know what they say.”

“Uh, not until you tell me.”

“Love is blind,” Roy says.

“I think you should get that as a tattoo,” Ed says.

“Would you get one to match?”

Ed scoffs. “ _No_. I’d get one that said ‘I’m fucking the Führer.’”

Roy’s face is getting rather warm. “Ah.”

“Yup.”

“Goodnight, Edward.”

“G’night, asshole,” Ed says. “ _See_ you in the morning.”

“Provided that you haven’t shrunk to nothing overnight.”

“Go to sleep.”

“You first.”

“God damn it, Roy.”

“I’ll make it up to you.”

“You’d better,” Ed says.

And Roy is better—he’s better now than he was; he’s better like this. He’s better with Edward Elric beside him.


End file.
